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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28800 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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Let's talk about Israel and Palestine.

Okay, I can hear you sighing already. But before you look away, let's talk about Clausewitz.

War is a continuation of politics by other means. In our ideological age, where everything is political, it may not seem profound: but it establishes a commonality between the military and civilian where analogies can be made. Like, 'what if we have no ability to fight a war, but continue it anyway?' Could we just... filibuster, our enemies, until they give us the political ends we desire?

This concept is similar to the Trotskyite concept of 'no war, no peace'. (That the policy ended in disaster and Brest-Litovsk bodes ill.) In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted between states. The loser gives concessions to the winner, with the assumption that even a bad peace is better than a bad war, that ending hostilities - even for the moment - is the best way to bring about revanchist policy.

The differential between Palestine and Israel in terms of military capacity is greater than ever: it was never at par, even in 1948. Seventy-five years later and the Arabs might as well be Ewoks against the Empire. Not to say that they lack the capacity to harm the Israelis, but they have no military capacity to enforce political goals on their enemy. Even now, their demands for a ceasefire are entirely one sided: they are simply outmatched in every conceivable military dimension.

There exists a hope in the Palestinian cause, that there will be a tipping point where they can present to the international community of some Israeli atrocity that will bring about a external intervention. It is the only card they have to play. But now that Israel has control of the food aid that goes into Gaza with the ousting of UNWRA, time is no longer on their side. Their enemy will never consent to a return to the former status quo, no matter how urgently the international community chastises them.

Not coming to terms and holding on for maximalist goals may seem like a cheat in insurgency warfare. But inevitably, reality and physical limits intrude onto the nationalist fantasy. It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people. This conflict - indefinitely sustained by Soviet leftist dregs of the anti-colonialist cause - will come to an end not through some master stroke of diplomacy, but a famine long in the making.

Hamas sought to use international sympathy as a weapon, relying on the services provided by American and European NGOs so that they could devote all the funds they neglected to invest in their civilians into their military. Now that military is destroyed, they have no leverage at all. The Israelis are not bluffing. They will not give in, no matter what the pressure. They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.

As Calgacus would say, "They make a desert and call it peace." Modern problems require Roman solutions. The fatal Palestinian mistake was that they always assumed Israel would come to the negotiating table. After fifty years of fruitless negotiation, the Israelis finally have had enough. There will be no more deals, no more bargains. Just the short, terminal drop to destruction.

If Israel starves all Gazans to death, there would probably be a severe international response. We are seeing consistent public opinion shifts against Israel already. Mike Huckabee’s recent shift is a telling example. There’s also been a general shift against Judaism among the public. The question is how much Israel can torture the civilians before there is sufficient moral pressure to make them stop.

If they had genocided them in the 1960s, they would've probably gotten away with it.

The question is how much Israel can torture the civilians before there is sufficient moral pressure to make them stop.

Hence the framing. If one believes that the torture is being inflicted by Hamas' refusal to surrender then there ought to be moral pressure on them to do so.

Hamas surrendering will not happen, but even if it did, it wouldn't stop the fighting. If you could magically get the Hamas leadership to surrender, they'd either be murdered by their underlings or, after declaring they surrendered, a new organization would spring up to fight Israel. Gaza is not a case of a peace-desiring or indifferent population being dragged into war by their leadership; it's a case of a war-loving population having the leaders they want.

I think there are multiple meanings of surrender that are confused here. I don't mean retreat and it's not just leaving the populace or the underlines to do whatever. In this context I meant it as keeping the organization of forces and all materiel intact and accounted for while ordering every member to obey without exception the orders of the victor.

Hamas is more than capable of imposing their will on the populace of Gaza.

Hamas is not capable of that sort of surrender. There is no "emperor of Hamas" who will be listened to if he tells everyone to obey the Israelis.

First, on a normative level, this is why international law requires command authority. An armed force must be “under a command responsible for the conduct of its subordinates”. I'm sure I"m preaching to the choir here, but "We have constituted our armed forces to be incapable of X, therefore it isn't our fault if we don't do X" is a game theoretic self-own. It's invites the very conduct we seek to proscribe.

Second, I'm not sure that's right. Hamas is more than capable of butchering domestic opposition. They did it to the PLO, they can impose what they want at the tip of a bayonet and be obeyed. Perhaps though.

International law can require command authority all it wants; it can't make it actually exist. Hamas's leadership cannot surrender and retain command authority.

Of course. But it goes to who is at fault -- the siege ends when Hamas surrenders. That Hamas has constructed itself to make that impossible to surrender doesn't change the fact that the lack of surrender is the but-for cause that perpetuates the siege.

International law can't make anyone do anything -- but it does assign normative responsibility based on the practices of nations. Doubly so when there the construction that prevents the resolution of the conflict based on that practice is itself against that practice.

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Are Gazans starving ? Not yet at least. Not in the way we understand starving. At 5.8%, that would put it alongside stable middle-economy nations like Mexico, Thailand and Brazil. Most of Africa & the Indian Subcontinent are doing twice as worse. Gaza's tragedies, like Ukraine over-reported in comparison to mundane everyday evil that kills more people everywhere else.

how much Israel can torture the civilians before there is sufficient moral pressure to make them stop

What's left? To viewers on social media, Israel is already conducting a holocaust-esque genocide. Facts be damned. I imagine Israel can keep going for much longer, because Hamas has milked social media sympathy for all its worth. The only pressure that matters comes from the State department or Israel's population. A change of heart of either group will come from a frustration with the ineffectiveness of how the war is run, rather than any moral calculus.

The 5.8% figure is from two months ago and was already part of an upward trajectory. The writeup you linked largely confirms that Gazans are starving, though it argues that it's not due to Israel withholding aid.

We're talking past each other, and I'm at fault.

When I say starvation, I imagine a famine where people are dying in droves. Deadly famines were a part of life in the Indian Subcontinent until the 1980s. Today, chronic wasting and stunting remain commonplace.

On further reflection, I'm being plain heartless. Years of walking past beggars under the bridge has stripped me of humanity. Just because starvation is common in the subcontinent, doesn't mean I should withhold my sympathy for the Gazans. It's true that the world only cares when Europeans(ish) are dying. I'm sour about it, no doubt. But, sympathies aren't zero sum.

Are Gazans starving ? Not yet at least

I'm still right going by my definition of starvation. But, it's a moot definition. Shouldn't have to wait for the situation to turn into a biblical locust-plague before it can be called starvation.

  1. I am responding to the OP’s future scenario

  2. You linked me to a long write-up by an activist. Why should I take it seriously? Do you have a specific reason to think Gaza isn’t facing starvation? Why not specify the compelling evidence instead of saying “here, read this long tweet by LiterallyWho”

  3. Why should I not trust the UN? https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165457

  4. Why should I not trust the World Food Programme? https://x.com/WFP/status/1947036919289741771

  5. Why should I not trust the World Hunger Organization? https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/gaza-facing-man-made-mass-starvation-says-whos-tedros-2025-07-23/

  6. Why should I not trust the NYT? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/world/middleeast/gaza-starvation.html

  7. Why should I not trust Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children, and Oxfam? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9xkx7vnmxo.amp

  8. Are American Baptists lying to me? https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/more-than-100-organizations-are-sounding-the-alarm-to-allow-lifesaving-aid-into-gaza/

  9. ^ Is the Catholic charity group Caritas from Germany lying to me?

  10. ^ Is the Episcopal Peace Fellowship lying to me?

  11. Is Japan International Volunteer Center lying to me?

  12. ^ Is the Mennonite Central Committee lying to me?

The starvation claimed by the linked urls and a starvation where 'Israel starves all Gazans to death' are not the same thing. My contention is with the slippery slope framing of it. I don't believe the OP was implying mass famine either.

The standoff between Israel, UN and Hamas is technically causing starvation, but there is a big difference between undernourishment and deadly famine. I am uniquely heartless having grown up in the 3rd world. Stunting & wasting is commonplace. Deadly famines killed millions until the 1980s. I could have more sympathy. I'll try.

That being said, the article I linked is worth reading. The linked author seems legitimate enough. Biased, yes. But, not an activist. He also posts on substack, but the article was pay walled there.

This Substack is about Defense, the Middle East, and the psychology of disinformation, from a former soldier. I served for 16 years in the British Army (2005-21), leaving the Parachute Regiment with the rank of Major. I completed three tours in Afghanistan including one attached to US Army Special Forces, and further tours of Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

I was a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, teaching in the War Studies and Behavioral Science departments, teaching military theory and leadership to officer cadets in training. I am currently a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

In 2024, I visited Gaza twice and captured Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon. I am a regular Middle East commentator on national media.

a general shift against Judaism among the public

Antisemitism isn't a monolith. Thinking of it as a monolith is unproductive and misleading. There are at least 4 distinct groups that plausibly hate jews: Muslims, Leftists, Incels and Bandwagoners.

Muslims hatred for Jews runs deep. This is proper bigotry. Proper antisemitism. Modern muslims may articulate a rationale for their hatred of Israel, and there are many good reasons. But, the hatred precedes those reasons.

Leftists hate Jews for being perceived as right-wing (economically and socially) oppressors.

Incels hate Jews because they are smart and rich. It's hatred rooted in jealousy and resentment. Here, an incel is a standin-term for a chronically online man who believes in a binary alpha male / beta male characterization of the world. They aren't necessarily sexless. Many black men (famously Kanye) and poor whites fit this bill.

Bandwagoners only care about optics. Optics tell them that Israel is bad and worth hating so they hate them. bandwagoners are most vulnerable to visible displays of cruelty. This is the largest group.

In Europe, rising antisemitism has to do with a rising Muslim population. Similarly, in NYC, it has to do with the rise of a Muslim-coded leftist as mayoral candidate. On college campuses, the rise in antisemitism is because of bandwagoners who can't afford to be seen as uncool in university. University leftists were always antisemitic, so there isn't much scope for rise there. On the internet and especially X, it is fueled by incel tears.

The reason I make this distinction, is because leftists and bandwagoners channel their hatred through Netanyahu. If he goes, Israel may get a period of relief from these 2 groups. As jews continue to lose face in public, incels are already losing motivation. If the new Israeli leader lacks big-dick-energy, the incels will mark him as effeminate and move over to their next source of resentment.

That leaves us with the Muslims. I don't have an answer here. Muslims seem to genuinely hate Jews and Israel. I don't know if anything can be done about it. As the population of devout muslims rises through the 1st world, antisemitism will rise in lockstep. Maybe they'll become irreligious as they integrate. But, the results in Europe aren't encouraging.

Leftists hate Jews for being perceived as right-wing (economically and socially) oppressors.

Ironically, most of the American Jews (excluding Hassids and similar groups) are in deep love with the Left and especially the Left's economical and social doctrines. Not all, I'd say but the majority, especially the prominent Jews that show up on TV.

Many black men (famously Kanye) and poor whites fit this bill.

Kanye though is not poor and hardly unsuccessful. While black antisemitism has long and sordid history (which mostly resides on the "convenient proxy for oppression" part) I don't think alt-right antisemitism comes from that angle. Rather, it comes from resentment with the general power structure setup in American society, which many people, especially on the right, are feeling, and instead of doing proper intellectual work of figuring out where that comes from, reaching for the ages-old convenient explanation. Of course if shit's going wrong, it must be the Jews! It's always the Jews! Everybody knows that! And of course, the thing I mentioned above - many American Jews being in deep love with the left, even while the Left hates them - doesn't help since it automatically codes them as "the enemy".

If the new Israeli leader lacks big-dick-energy, the incels will mark him as effeminate and move over to their next source of resentment.

There's always "Mossad". Mossad has a ton of big dick energy, and you can blame them for literally anything - after all, not having any evidence just proves how cunning they are, you didn't expect the Mossad to leave any evidence, are you stupid or what?!

Incels? That's one I haven't heard. Thought that was orthogonal to perceptions of Jewish people. Being driven to dislike everyone except Jewish and Asian men and in the entertainment industry seems more fitting. Jewish guys have a nebbish reputation after all. It's the Booty Sweat celebs you'd think most piss them off.

I suppose to the degree incels are nerdy and into Asian women (I'm very much not, and frankly don't get it) then the likes of Zuckerberg and wife and the salience of rich Jewish nerds may weigh heavily on them.

incels

This is just a fancy way to say "dissident" when it comes from the mouths of the orthodox (who believe they are dissidents axiomatically).

and into Asian women

There's a stereotype that Asian cultures tend to encourage women to have a healthier relationship with what men want, and men who are not getting what they want right now are more aware of that. When the orthodox say that, though, it's mostly to attack Asian women for being pick-mes (orthodoxy defines itself in opposition to everything men might want, so their existence lessens their power).

He is using an, uh, unconventional definition of incel. See, the sentence right after his use of the word.

Because they’re all dirty liars that have constantly lied about every single thing over at least the last 12 years I’ve been paying attention?

I clicked on link 3 at random, read the article, and am unsure how or what you’re supposed to be trusting.

I’m being honest here - what is it even saying?

‘ Israel shouldn't be be in charge of food distribution to Gaza - people in Gaza are hungry - Palestinians have been killed trying to get food ‘

It’s a fucking war.

What is it that you’re supposed to come away with? Why did you link it? What is it supposed to mean to me?

It seems to be every international org, and every unbiased org, any unaffiliated with Israel, that have been testifying the same thing. Why would Swedes or Japanese or American Baptists all be lying? The UN, in the link at #3, is saying that their own staff face hunger and “hospitals have admitted people in a state of severe exhaustion caused by a lack of food.”

It’s a fucking war.

Hardly. It’s disproportionate, there’s no viable objective, Israel’s intention is to ethnically cleanse the land, and there’s no legitimate reason to be punishing the civilian populations by withholding aid or firing on civilians attempting to obtain aid.

It seems to be every international org, and every unbiased org, any unaffiliated with Israel, that have been testifying the same thing. Why would Swedes or Japanese or American Baptists all be lying? The UN, in the link at #3, is saying that their own staff face hunger and “hospitals have admitted people in a state of severe exhaustion caused by a lack of food.”

Israel has always been disliked by basically everyone because "Jews" aside from American conservatives who either A) Recognized Islam as a greater threat; or B) Were religious fellas hoping for a restoration of the holy land, eventually. Or maybe the rapture.

There are very few actual option in this situation. Gazans, by a vast majority, want a genocide of Israel. Israeli's are a split bunch, some want genocide of Gaza, some want peace, and some want to genocide themselves. The people who want peace cant get it. So long as no magical entity comes and brainwashes the Gazans into thinking Jews are cool and good neighbors (see, for example, the fictional jutsu kotoamtsukami it will continue to be. We then are left with two permanent solutions, being genocide of either side. Lay down your chips, which would you prefer?

Israel has always been disliked by basically everyone

I disagree with "always".

Israel was popular with the pro-establishment left well into the 1980s, even in countries where the pro-establishment left wasn't dominated by Jews. The Yes, Minister sketch about Israel-Palestine has Hacker and the politicians being pro-Israel because it is the moderate, popular position and Sir Humphrey and the Deep State being pro-Palestine because they want to make nice to the Gulf Arabs. (This was back when the Gulf Arab monarchies were as anti-Israel as the rest of the Arab world). Pro-establishment right attitudes to Israel used to depend on how much the pro-establishment right favoured making nice to the Gulf Arabs for cynical oil-politics reasons vs standing up for Western values.

Why? A combination of Cold War politics (Israel's worst enemies where Soviet clients), Holocaust guilt, straightforward preference for civilisation over barbarism, and a belief among non-Communist socialists that Israel back when Labour was the natural party of government was a socialist success story.

What changed? The Cold War ended, post-colonial guilt replaced Holocaust guilt, the era where Israel was a plucky underdog receded into history, changes in Israeli domestic politics made it less sympathetic to Western leftists (and, increasingly, with the rise of religious Zionism and the increasing influence of true-believing Orthodox Judaism, fans of Western civilisation more generally), the humanitarian situation for Palestinians in the West Bank (for which Israel is to blame) and Gaza (for which Israel is widely but unfairly blamed) got worse after the failure of Oslo compared to pre-Oslo.

A) Recognized Islam as a greater threat; or B) Were religious fellas hoping for a restoration of the holy land, eventually. Or maybe the rapture.

Ot C) see Christianity as having developed from Judaism and consider themselves culturally tied to Jews. Also, they are more likely to be politically conservative which means they support American allies.

Supporting Israel because it brings about the Rapture is basically a weakman.

It’s disproportionate, there’s no viable objective, Israel’s intention is to ethnically cleanse the land, and there’s no legitimate reason to be punishing the civilian populations by withholding aid or firing on civilians attempting to obtain aid.

It’s defensive.

It’s to no longer be attacked, to get back hostage bodies, and to be safe in the future.

It isn’t - if those Palestinians were instead Germans or Chinese, this wouldn’t be happening. It is happening because instead they have a death cult attacking them for decades at their doorstep.

The aid is constantly going to Hamas. Outside of very specific incidences, Israel is not firing on civilians. And certainly not on purpose or wholesale.

The Gazan population has grown.

Nothing you’re saying is accurate or true.

hospitals have admitted people in a state of severe exhaustion caused by a lack of food.”

This is a warzone and you’re sending out anti Israeli propaganda. That the place even has hospitals is amazing.

Defensive is a hilarious word to use in this context given were rapidly approaching year 100 of this conflict (or 1000, depending on how far back you want to play the grievance game).

I don't think it would be very difficult to come up with an argument that the Palestinians are on the defensive due to $PREVIOUS_ATTROCITY.

Also quite funny to call it defensive when there's a 1000:1 military power ratio and one side has killed 6x the people of the other.

If the credible threat against you has been defeated in the field for almost two straight calendar years, are you really on the defensive?

It’s defensive.

Yea they're really giving the impression of being on the defensive. This is preventative, and coupled with a highly ideological notion of getting that land back and removing these people once and for all.

"Defensive" in that it's a direct response to offensive action, not that they're currently holding ground and trying not to get pushed back by a sustained opposing offensive.

What did Mike Huckabee do?

He called Israel unwelcoming to Christian organizations and then met with the Palestinian authority yesterday.

Letter from him qua ambassador: https://static-cdn.toi-media.com/www/uploads/2025/07/IMG_0737-merged.pdf

To be fair to Israel, there is a truly massive amount of resources flowing from United States evangelical organizations to Christian missionaries in Israel. It’s not much of a secret that the purpose of these missionaries is to convert Jews into Christians. I’m surprised it took them this long to remember they have borders.

Whats wrong with converting Jews to Christians anyway? Plenty of secular Jews are welcome in Israel, whats wrong with ethnic Jews that are Christian?

Jews are widely treated as a kind of endangered species.

It's the only thing that will cause a halachic jew to lose their halachically jewish status, IIRC.

They are still considered Jewish according to Halacha in that they can revert to Judaism without having to undergo the conversion that a gentile would undergo.

The practicing another religion thing is more specifically about Aliyah / migration to Israel. That is governed by different rules and so some groups that are not halachicly Jewish (patrilineal descendants of the first and second generation) are allowed and groups that are (converts to other religions born of Jewish mothers) are disallowed.

In practice the rules are very rarely enforced. A substantial minority of Soviet / Russian immigrants were (and are) low key practicing Christians, true even if the recent post-2022 Ukrainian wave. Unless someone is an open missionary on social media they are rarely rejected.

I legitimately did not know that converting to another religion means you don't qualify for the Law of Return. What I can't figure out (with five minutes of Googling) is whether that applies to atheist or agnostic Jews. Like, atheism isn't a religion you convert to, right? But it would be weird if Christian Jews were disqualified but atheist Jews weren't.

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low key practicing Christians

Do decorating a conifer around the New Year and boiling eggs for Easter count as Christian practices?

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He made it a public issue that Israel was withholding evangelical visas and then visited the church that Israel shelled (killing three Catholics)

Modern problems require Roman solutions.

You can't read history without coming across the names of long extinct tribes. It might be an exaggeration to say they were all genocided, many merely had their cultural identity destroyed through enslavement and conquest. All the same, there are no Etruscans, Gauls, Picts, Carthaginians, Trojans, and probably countless tribes, states and empires in regions without a written history. Imagine, for a moment, if they were all still among us, waging their 2000 year old grievances over minuscule patches of barren land the way Israel and Palestine are. Imagine if we were still arbitrating between extant Etruscans and Romans possession of the land north of the Tiber over a 3000 year history?

I won't claim some ability to arbitrate when, where or why genocide is necessary. But if you really think of a world without it, it's terrifying.

The etruscans and Gauls disappeared because they started going by ‘Romans’. It’s not an option for the Palestinians to become Israelis.

Yes it is? There's a sizeable Israeli Arab population. Cease the nonsense and they'd be better off

If every Gazan and inhabitant of the West Bank became a full citizen of Israel, there would no longer be a guarantee of a Jewish Israeli PM or President or majority in the Knesset.

There are currently 7 million Jews and 2.5 million others with Israeli citizenship. There are about 2 million Gazans and 2.7 million West Bank-ians. Add them in and give them voting power and suddenly there is a substantial non-Jewish voting block. (And then the wolves eat the lambs.)

It's one of those things everyone knows but not a lot of people make the point to explain. The Jewish Ethnostate depends on not integrating these people, or at the very least, integrating slowly.

They could, however, be called "Egyptians" with no major disruption to that polity, which many of them, or their ancestors, once were. The reason this doesn't happen is because having rump "Palestinians" as a grievance group is an intentional tactic.

They could, however, be called "Egyptians" with no major disruption to that polity

They have been accepted into other Arab countries. I don't think it went with "no major disruption".

That offer is not in the pipeline for the Palestinians.

It might be an exaggeration to say they were all genocided, many merely had their cultural identity destroyed through enslavement and conquest.

You win the prize! You are the 3rd person in this thread to tell me something I already know and said! Have a star.

The etruscans predominately were not enslaved and conquered, they joined Rome as Allies like other italic peoples. And while the Gauls were conquered, the majority of the population remained intact and Gallic-speaking until after the edict of Caracalla granted them citizenship.

The etruscans predominately were not enslaved and conquered

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Etruscan_Wars

Rome was the eventual victor in the wars and the last Etruscan resistance was crushed in 264 BC when Volsinii was destroyed after a slave revolt. The Etruscans were assimilated into Roman culture and Rome became one of the Mediterranean superpowers amongst the Greeks and the Carthaginians, though the Etruscan language survived for another 300 years (until the early first century AD).

Maybe you have some rosy ideas about what iron age "assimilation" looked like. But coming from the civilization that made "Vae Victus" a household phrase, I doubt it resembled an American "Melting Pot" too closely. I think it's safe to say they were conquered and had their cultural identity destroyed.

246 BC is emphatically not the iron age. Rome as a civilization famously did not require all conquered peoples to become culturally Roman so long as they colored within the lines.

You're missing the point about how conflicts actually happen and how tension propagates. Very, very few people are actually motivated by what happened 2000 years ago. Basically no one is acting out those kind of grudges, and it's ludicrous to suggest such, and equally ludicrous to be... grateful for past cultural and identarian destruction? There's this thing, which is real, which is called a cycle of violence, and part of how that happens is more immediate concerns always foreshadow old ones. Insofar as longer term tension exists, it's quite often intimately related to structural tensions of a more practical nature. Sure, cultures sometimes get into beef with each other over small stuff, but those beefs are always centered in the now or recent past, not the ancient past. In fact I struggle to think of any examples where 100+ year fights recur over something of equivalent negligible value like "miniscule patches of barren land".

Not to be pedantic, but here

https://theconversation.com/what-cattle-conflicts-say-about-identity-in-south-sudan-181637

Its not even permanent land its basically nomadic pastoralists raiding as has been their tradition for centuries.

Perhaps that still counts as economic necessity, but it is a choice to engage in primitive cattle herding instead of pivoting societally to productive economies. Raiding and conflict is a manifestation of intractable differences between cultures, not the cause. Bedouins are seizing on the opportunity to assault Druze with a cassus belli, not that they were content to live in peace absent external influence. Uncorking Libya resulted in Tobruk and Tripoli creating competing clan based governments immediately. Right NOW the Cambodians are assaulting the Thais over a dead temple region and the Thais are eager for a scrap due to insane local politics (tldr Thaksin clan and the royal/military both benefit from conflict specifically against the Cambodians).

There are plenty of people who WANT to exterminate their culturally distant geographic proximates. The issue is whether a unifying culture can supersede underlying cultural distances. The unifying project of "never again" has provided a stable shell for Franco-German-Anglo relations to stabilize, but this is an aberration facilitated only by tangible outcomes. If the overculture fails to deliver, guillotines follow. And we live in an era where the major cultural touchstones are torn down with no functional replacement ethos. Neoliberalism and neoconservatism were destroyed by MAGA and progressivism, but annihilating the Protestant-Calvinist northeastern spine along with the neolib/con framings leaves the USA with a much more fractured cultural landscape.

2000 year old grievances

There was no conflict until, at the earliest, 140 years ago. Praytell, what "2000 year old grievances" do the Palestinians harbor and wage war over?

Given that Arabic lacks the hard 'P' sound, while the Romans called the area Palestine (and the people have adopted that name in English), in Arabic it comes out sounding a lot like 'Philistine' (which is probably where Rome got the name), a reference to the tribe that frequently warred with the Israelites of the Bible (mostly post-Torah).

I'm not qualified to speak to the the actual ethnic histories on the ground, but "the Israelites and Philistines are going at it again" is a tale as old as David and Samson, which is probably closer to 3000 years. Arguably, modern peoples have decided to adopt the mantle of such an ancient conflict, but they clearly aren't doing it ironically.

I thought there was some scholarly hypothesis that the Philistines were Mycenean Greeks, which helps explain certain things like Samson being a more Herakles-type hero, instead of the more typical "Mouthpiece of God" prophet in the Old Testament.

I suppose that it is possible that the Philistines or their descendants Arabized, but I'd want to see the account of that survival since the connection seems a little dubious to me.

Everyone in the region first Aramaized, then Hellenized, then(Jews excepted) Arabized. Palestinians having some Philistine blood wouldn't be surprising, even if I suspect it's mostly Bedouin and Caananite.

then(Jews excepted) Arabized

Why except them? Palestinians are genetically more Jewish than Ashkenazi Israelis, so while they have some Arab admixture, they are mostly Arabized Jews.

The Arabs and Arabic didn't enter the Levant at scale until the Muslim conquest in the 7th century, right?

"Philistine" comes from Hebrew, originally. If you didn't know, Hebrew is also a Semitic language.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/Philistine

My understanding is that the genetics of Palestinian/Levantine Arabs and ethnic groups that predate the Muslim invasion differ, but there's a lot of admixture due to conversions to Islam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Palestinians

Long story short, "Palestinians" are not "Philistines" even though it's the same label.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines#:~:text=Philistines%20(Hebrew%3A%20%D7%A4%D6%B0%D6%BC%D7%9C%D6%B4%D7%A9%D6%B0%D7%81%D7%AA%D6%B4%D6%BC%D7%99%D7%9D%2C%20romanized,generally%20referred%20to%20as%20Philistia.

there are no Etruscans

That the Etruscans were assimilated into the Roman Republic is a matter of historical record.

Gauls

The French consider themselves to be Gauls.

Picts

Controversial in Scotland, to say the least

Carthaginians

I'll give you that one.

Trojans

If we go with schoolboy history, the Romans disagreed. If we go with modern archaeology, Troy was continuously inhabited from the Neolithic through to Roman times, and the Bronze Age Collapse hit Troy after Mycenae, meaning that the Iliad story of "Troy was destroyed by a Mycenae-led Greek army in the late Bronze Age" is proven false.

Deliberate genocide happens, but it is the exception and not the rule.

Good luck finding the forest.

The Israelis have been holding the wolf by the ears for 77 years and it looks like they are shifting the hands to the neck. I understand their position: they sincerely believe than any bargain with the Palestinians will only be a stepping point to the final item on the list:

  • recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state
  • two states with the borders drawn by Israel
  • two states with 1968 borders
  • two states with 1947 UN borders
  • two states with Peel commission borders
  • single state with the Jews owning only the land they actually bought
  • Arab state with the Jews owning only the land they actually bought but not having citizenship
  • Arab state with the Jews not owning shit
  • Arab state without the Jews

The real problem is that no one is willing to step up and threaten to glass the country that will violate the peace terms first. This means both Israel and Palestine are completely free to defect, unlike Yugoslavs in B&H.

This is a classic slippery slope fallacy. If you think there are good reasons why, for example, you'd easily slide from bullet point 2 to bullet point 3, please state them. If not, this is a bad argument. Why on earth would a two-state solution, once established 'backslide' into something else? Makes no sense! Much less the Palestinians doing so, because the last 20 years or so it's been Israel, objectively, that has been deliberately trying to move and wiggle the borders more to their liking - so if anyone should be worried about a slippery slope, it's the Palestinians?

Genocide and/or Ethnic Cleansing of Israelis has widespread supermajority public support among Palestinians. So does does destroying America. The extrapolations from such things are not hard.

But slopes are slippery! It's the literal, physical nature of a slope (and the relationship between static and kinetic friction) that, once you start to move down one, you tend to continue. The argument is, I suppose, that a lot of things people treat like slopes really aren't... but aren't they? I'm struggling to think of a case where a political movement, having achieved its proximal objective, declares victory and goes home. Actually, I'm not just struggling; the idea is absurd. Individuals can do that; amorphous groups never can.

Victory draws interest because everyone loves a winner, and to divide up the spoils -- power, but mostly cachet -- you get purity tests, which rapidly become purity spirals. The intra-group dynamics drive the inter-group dynamics: if you don't keep pushing for more, you get pushed out. This is what we see in real life: victory only emboldens movements, and a couple decades down the line, they're demanding things their forebears' mocked as slippery slope arguments. They reach and reach until, finally, the public's patience runs out... then their opponents get a turn.

(This is just one mechanism. There are others.)

The civil rights movement, the moral majority, the LGBT movement, anti-communism, progressivism, interventionism; just a handful of the many, many examples from recent history.

To put it in concrete terms: obviously bullet point 2 makes bullet point 3 more likely. Well, I very much doubt it'll follow such a clean progression; there's generally more momentum to these things. Palestinians don't exactly hide the fact that a supermajority want the last point; how could letting them organize and regroup not make it more likely? It might still be unlikely -- not like any of the other Arab nations have proven able to enforce their will on Israel -- but I think it's very hard to argue it would become less likely.

But, you argue, isn't Israeli oppression a slippery slope too? If Palestine just lets Israel establish settlements in the West Bank (or whatever), doesn't that just make more thorough depredations more likely? Yes! Both sides accuse the other of starting down a slippery slope, and both are right!

(You frame this as 'backsliding' from the two state solution; because you think it's more fair, presumably? But why would Palestine see it that way? Backsliding would moving towards an Israeli-controlled single state. A Palestinian-controlled single state would, obviously, be continuing to slide forward down the same slope: Palestine achieving it's goals.)

In Germany, the Nazis rose in large part to oppose the communists, who were, at the time, the dominant political force in the country (not in terms of votes, certainly, but in terms of organization and political violence. Which was, after all, their stated path to victory). Then the Nazis, having achieved power, ruthlessly suppressed the communists; they would do the same to them if they got the chance, they said. Which was thoroughly borne out the moment the communists did get the chance!

So how, in this model, can de-escalation ever occur? Well, one side can wipe the other out, either literally or in terms of group membership; this is how the conflict between slave owners and abolitionists ended, for example. But true de-escalation mainly happens when both sides lose, I think. The Good Friday Agreement was a tacit admission from both sides that neither could achieve their full aims. And sometimes, when the swings are too quick and dramatic, the public can simultaneously lose patience with both.

Individuals can do that; amorphous groups never can.

And in-between, specific groups can. This wasn't the group I was looking for, but in 2015 a group called Freedom To Marry shut itself down:

And, proving your point:

Instead of becoming “an organization that flails around and figures out what to do next,” he said he would help employees find work in other “good-guy causes” and make sure the group’s records were properly archived so that other social movements could study its methods.

Yeah, a real organization with rigid, non-democratic decision making processes can avoid this dynamic, at least so long as those processes hold. Japan's surrender in WWII is instructive, here: There was a cabal of officers who tried to prevent the surrender, but discipline held and they were rebuffed. The difference with amorphous groups is that there's just no one who can do the rebuffing; 'leaders' last only so long as the rest of the movement deigns to listen to them.

Thanks for the reply. Speaking in general, slippery slopes are tough because as I mentioned, they can be legitimate expressions of cascading effects, or they can be a rhetorically devious tool without a sound foundation. The key differentiator is if you hand-wave the actual progression too much, it effectively functions as a fallacy. Basically, fear-mongering! There are cases where "if you give an inch they'll take a mile" but there are also cases where small changes are catastrophized, so at the end of the day you kind of have to take it case by case.

I do not think that a broad assertion that all politics is a maximalist, existential struggle is accurate as a general worldview, nor a common enough viewpoint to be assumed.

In politics, victory leading to stalling out is actually more common than you might imagine. It's partially related to the idea of "political capital", where there's actually only so much appetite/time/attention/money for change to go around. Not uncommon is the situation where a major change leaves everyone exhausted and further efforts lose their urgency, or even provoke a counter-reaction in a kind of rubber banding effect. Honestly I think it's more fair to say that societies are generally biased towards the status quo, rather than constantly hopping on runaway trains. This is especially true the more lower-d democratic a society is! So clearly Weimar Germany is a bad example. I think people forget that politics is ultimately downstream of the actual opinions of regular people, not the other way around.

So when it comes to Israel-Palestine, a one-state solution would need to be accompanied by a ground-up swell of support and persuasion to co-exist. A two-state solution is almost by its very nature a compromise, and as they say, the best compromise leaves everybody at least a little angry. And didn't you yourself say that true escalation comes when both sides lose? So at least in my eyes, any two state solution, if actually implemented, is definitionally a détente. I will however concede that the higher the violence level, and the more disproportionate the representation, the less moderating influence there is. Again though I would ask the question: would a genuine attempt at a two-state solution, under Israeli-preferred lines, be accomplished via a high degree of force? I think the answer is a clear no, but I'd be interested to hear if you disagree and think it's really a plausible end-state of naked maximalist agenda-seeking by both sides. Furthermore, geographic national boundaries in particular are, historically, way more sticky than you might think. Just look how awkwardly persistent the British and European decided lines are in the Middle East overall, despite their in many cases obvious unsuitability to match the facts on the ground! (I will however concede that I'm not quite aware of anything quite as swiss-cheese as the current scenario of settlements, partitions, and general strangeness that is current Israel (broad definition) and that virtually any 'solution' requires at least some people to relocate in practice, though I assume a halfway equitable solution could be found, ideally with plenty of money)

There are cases where "if you give an inch they'll take a mile" but there are also cases where small changes are catastrophized, so at the end of the day you kind of have to take it case by case.

I don't disagree; you've only got so much energy to care about these things. Not every issue is sufficiently important to sufficiently many people to foster this dynamic.

I do not think that a broad assertion that all politics is a maximalist, existential struggle is accurate as a general worldview, nor a common enough viewpoint to be assumed.

Not all politics, sure. I'd even grant that there have been times and places where no political questions were treated that way, or at least not at any scale. But though I take the general point, surely Israel/Palestine meets that bar? That's absolutely how people on both sides describe it.

In politics, victory leading to stalling out is actually more common than you might imagine. It's partially related to the idea of "political capital", where there's actually only so much appetite/time/attention/money for change to go around. Not uncommon is the situation where a major change leaves everyone exhausted and further efforts lose their urgency, or even provoke a counter-reaction in a kind of rubber banding effect.

Sure, this is true. I think I'd categorize it as a 'both sides lose' effect: one side lost the election, the other was failed or betrayed by their chosen representative. Actually accomplishing things is hard, so this is a reasonably common outcome. (Appearing to accomplish things is easier, though, and pissing off the other side is easier still; the Trump approach, which has proven very effective in motivating his base.)

A counter-reaction, though, is entirely in line with my theory. The question is whether it truly behaves like a rubber band (in that the oscillation is damped and will eventually stop), or like a swaying top (where the oscillations will only grow until it inevitably falls one way or the other).

Honestly I think it's more fair to say that societies are generally biased towards the status quo, rather than constantly hopping on runaway trains. This is especially true the more lower-d democratic a society is! So clearly Weimar Germany is a bad example. I think people forget that politics is ultimately downstream of the actual opinions of regular people, not the other way around.

This, though, I don't think I agree with. Well, the problem was bad in the Weimar Republic and the Weimar Republic wasn't particularly democratic, but that just means that democracy isn't a necessary condition. To build out the theory a little further, my contention is that you see this dynamic where disorganized (or poorly organized) groups compete over important goals; political parties in democratic countries are an example of this, but so is gang warfare and Israeli settlers/Palestinian terrorists.

But the cases where politics lacks this dynamic seem to me to be the ones where people are least engaged; single party states, effectively single party states (in that the parties don't really disagree on anything important), local politics (though those can be astonishingly vicious at times). Andrew Jackson made America much more democratic, but he certainly didn't reduce polarization.

I suppose I'm not really sure what you mean by how 'democratic' a society is. That regular people hold moderate views? That definitely helps, but I'm not sure what it has to do with democracy. That important questions are resolved via elections? I think that makes it worse. That people believe that important questions should be resolved via elections? Maybe -- it makes escalating to violence less likely, at least. But that's still more or less true of both major parties in America despite their increasing radicalism. I'll grant it's getting less true over time, though.

A two-state solution is almost by its very nature a compromise, and as they say, the best compromise leaves everybody at least a little angry. And didn't you yourself say that true escalation comes when both sides lose? So at least in my eyes, any two state solution, if actually implemented, is definitionally a détente.

Ah, well, I think it might be assuming the conclusion to call it a 'solution' (which I did as well), because I don't believe it'd actually end the conflict.

Right now, isn't a two-state solution clearly a win for Palestine? It's not everything they want, but it's far better than (apparently) permanent Israeli occupation. It'd count as a loss for both sides if they credibly committed to abandoning their claim on the rest of Israel, which 1. would, so far as I know, be incredibly unpopular and 2. no one in Palestine currently has the legitimacy to credibly commit to anything. (Plausibly a misstep on Israel's part, but plausibly not; not like those leaders were especially willing to negotiate a reasonable settlement before.)

Without that commitment, a two-state solution is just proof that Palestine's tactics are working, which I believe would only lead to renewed enthusiasm for them, coupled with much greater capacity to carry them out.

Again though I would ask the question: would a genuine attempt at a two-state solution, under Israeli-preferred lines, be accomplished via a high degree of force? I think the answer is a clear no, but I'd be interested to hear if you disagree and think it's really a plausible end-state of naked maximalist agenda-seeking by both sides.

Establishing the two-state solution wouldn't require any significant violence; Israel would just need to pull back to the line. I'm not clear on why they'd do that, but they could. If you're asking what it would take, practically speaking, to bring that about, I suppose sufficient international pressure could do it without (first order) violence.

I believe the violence would come after, when Palestine uses its newfound freedom to reorganize and rearm before attacking Israel again. Is there indication Palestine would be satisfied with a two-state solution? There might be, I suppose, but I haven't encountered it.

My position isn't that a two-state solution is the end-state; it's that it's the pendulum swinging the other way; in fact, the middle position is when the pendulum swings the fastest. (Though, given the relative strength of each side, I'm not convinced it is the middle position; Gaza's situation pre-October 7th is probably closer.)

Furthermore, geographic national boundaries in particular are, historically, way more sticky than you might think. Just look how awkwardly persistent the British and European decided lines are in the Middle East overall, despite their in many cases obvious unsuitability to match the facts on the ground!

I think this is 1. a relatively recent development and 2. motivated primarily by technological factors. The obsession with keeping borders exactly where they are was borne out of the incredible destruction of WWI and especially WWII -- it's too high a price, and any would-be conqueror needs to be shut down hard so people don't forget it.

In Europe, at least. I'm honestly not too sure why the taboo has (kind of) held in Africa and the Middle East. I suppose the same factors exist there to a lesser extent (in that they're less densely populated than pre-war Europe, and that military technology has actually mostly turned away from mass destruction towards precision over the past half century), and the First Gulf War probably set an example for anyone thinking about it. But that was relatively late in the period in question.

I suppose the fundamental reason is that the British didn't just draw lines on a map; they established governments for each of these new states, and each of those governments had a vested interest in not losing their territory, however little sense it made for them to have it. Defense is generally easier than offense, so it stuck?

As to the messy intermingling of peoples and the resolution thereof: it's worth noting that, when the game of musical chairs stopped in Western Europe post-WWII and the borders were 'fixed,' the Allies additionally engaged in an absolutely massive campaign of ethnic cleansing; putting everyone back where they belonged, you might say. This largely targeted Germans, but it was far from exclusive to them. The fact that those nations are so neatly sorted today is the result of a deliberate, forceful effort that would absolutely be called genocide today.

Was that actually a good idea in spite of the human cost? In retrospect it hardly seems necessary, but mainly because it's hard to imagine Germans and Frenchmen struggling to peacefully coexist, which I imagine was much less hard to believe at the time. I have more mixed feelings about the similar effort accompanying the separation of India and Pakistan, because it's very easy for me to imagine conflict between Muslims and Hindus. Not that there isn't conflict between the two now; separating populations that hate each other likely makes low-level violence less common and outright war more common. Not sure which end of that tradeoff is better.

If this were happening in a vacuum with no historical context, that might be a good argument. But this situation is all about historical context, and to ignore it to this degree is somewhere between hopelessly naive and wilfully blind.

Nothing about pointing out a slippery slope says we should ignore context, nor did I even imply such (in fact the opposite, maybe you should re-read my comment?). Despite the several snarky answers I've received, no one has yet to say why, conditioned on you having at least semi-successfully reached a two-state solution based on borders drawn by Israel, you'd be highly likely to see the borders change yet again in a way unfavorable to Israel. If you were to reach that point, obviously the major border questions would have been settled already. It just doesn't make sense, and there's no plausible mechanism I can think of. Therefore, it is accurately seen as a slippery slope fallacy. The historical context comes into play when examining the links between the points along the hypothesized slope for plausibility.

The path is "two-state solution" -> "Palestine attacks Israel". This probably just leads right back to where we are now, with Israel and occupied territories, but given sufficient international pressure and a foolish enough Israeli government, it could lead to a land-for-peace deal moving the borders in a manner favorable to the Palestinians.

Your initial question was:

Why on earth would a two-state solution, once established 'backslide' into something else?

This is hopelessly naive if you have the slightest familiarity with either side's ideological commitments. No amount of logic-chopping and theorycrafting will make that question not be... well, dumb. The Palestinian side's goal is for Israel to cease to exist.

no one has yet to say why, conditioned on you having at least semi-successfully reached a two-state solution based on borders drawn by Israel, you'd be highly likely to see the borders change yet again in a way unfavorable to Israel.

They probably wouldn't, but that doesn't mean Palestinians would stop trying to accomplish that, or refrain from doing something even worse than 7/10 toward that end. It's clear to anyone paying attention that there's no stable two-state solution in the cards.

If you were to reach that point, obviously the major border questions would have been settled already.

Oh my God, no no no no no no no. The only way reaching that point is imaginable is as a temporary and unstable compromise. It is only by pretending it's a theoretical, academic question where historical context doesn't matter that you've managed to talk yourself into thinking otherwise.

I think that both sides can reasonably claim a fear of a slippery slope.

Have you heard of this obscure group called Hamas? They were kinda big some time ago, and seem really hell-bent to fast forward to the end of the slope where the Jews are drowned in the sea. Do you think that if Palestine was recognized as a state in the borders of 1968, they would think their jihad over and decide to become good neighbors?

And on the Israeli side of things, there are groups who want Jews to settle in the West Banks to establish a permanent Israeli claim to this land. Last time I checked, they were running the Israeli government. If I was a Palestinian, I might reasonably get the impression that they will take the next slice of land rather sooner than later.

Of course there are moderates on both sides, but fear of the extremists seems to be very appropriate.

Given that every negotiation has failed by one side or the other, and the two sides expect defecting by the other side (and thus have every incentive to defect first and seize initiative) there’s no viable way to have a two-state solution of any type. There are two end states on offer

1). Israel controls all the territory and has enough weaponry to protect its borders and citizens.

2). Israel is dissolved and thus the state reverts back to being the Arab state of Palestine.

3). We keep up intermittent wars until one of those two states is reached.

Given this, the best solution is backing one side to break the stalemate and take over, the quicker tge better. Then once one side or the other loses completely enough to accept they won’t be in the Levant anymore, the conflict ends.

Given this, the best solution is backing one side to break the stalemate and take over, the quicker tge better.

What does this mean in practice? Where do the Palestinians go?

To be honest I don’t have a good answer for that. Obviously they need a country of their own, but I don’t think it can be in the Levant simply because the land area is too small (it’s the size of New Jersey) and the two sides have so little trust and so much homicidal anger that peaceful sharing whether one state or two isn’t going to happen.

Israel is dissolved and thus the state reverts back to being the Arab state of Palestine.

As with Taiwan, this cannot happen, because this would not be a reversion. There never was an Arab state of Palestine. There was an Ottoman province there, and then the British mandate, but no Arab state.

Regardless of whether or not that is a fallacy, it's what the Israelis sincerely believe, after having all of their previous offers for peace rejected. Now, you can say that they're wrong to believe that way, but to hold any other position in Israel is politically a non-starter.

Look at it from the perspective of Hamas. Their victory condition is to destroy Israel and build an Islamic theocracy in its place. They might be fanatics, but they are not stupid to the point that they realize they have no chance to defeat Israel on the battlefield.

Before the Oct-7 attacks, Israel was in the process of normalizing its relationship with Arab neighbors. An entrenched peaceful coexistence would be the death knell to Hamas ambitions. While killing Jews is always seen as a good thing by Hamas, I think the real objective was to provoke Israel into destroying Gaza.

I think that on a grand strategy level, everything is going according to plan for Hamas. Gazan kids are getting killed through bombs or starvation, but that it just their purpose in this war, they become martyrs (which is a pretty great outcome for them, if you believe the nutjobs) and while Israel has certainly killed a lot of Hamas fighters (again, not a bad outcome for the nutjobs), they have barely made a dent in the population of Gaza. Now Israel is in charge of the caring for a civilian population which hate them and can not feed itself. This is a pretty sweet trap to place your opponent in. Sure, the IDF can start genociding in earnest, but likely even Trump's MAGA base will have enough before they are half-way done. Meanwhile, their support in the rest of the West is evaporating.

If the IDF wanted to enact an Endloesung to their Gaza problem, the best thing way to accomplish it would have been nuking Gaza directly in response to Oct-7. Most of the Western world (apart from the glider-button minority) was still in shock. People are generally scope insensitive, their reaction to "the IDF killed 2M in a day" will not be that different to them killing merely a few k. It would have been a PR disaster (nukes!) and likely cost them most of their Western support, but any way they try to genocide their way out of the Gaza mess now (starvation? targeted bombing of civilians?) would cost them a lot more support. Not that I think that genocide is the answer here, obviously.

I think that the two responses which would have been reasonable by Israel would have been to either not do much (drone strike a few Hamas commanders, rescue a few hostages) or to go into Gaza with the goal of occupying it for a few decades (in the knowledge that they will get a lot of their soldiers killed in the process).

I think that on a grand strategy level, everything is going according to plan for Hamas.

No, it's not.

It was not expected that Israel would curb stomp Hezbollah and Iran, and that Assad's regime would fall.

The Axis of Resistance is pretty well fucked for the indefinite future.

First off, does Hamas really care about what happens to Assad or Iran? They take Iranian weapons but they also backed the Syrian rebels against Assad, they aren't exactly a full on proxy of Iran like Hezbollah. If anything the fact that Iran was ultimately dragged into the fight despite desperately trying to stay out of it directly is a Hamas W.

Second, the damage to the AoR seems pretty overblown:

  • Hezbollah is in the same position it was in 2006, with a nominally one sided ceasefire and a hostile Lebanese government forcing them to lay low temporarily, yet they still maintain total control over southern Lebanon
  • Houthis are stronger and more influential than ever, successfully shut down the port of Eilat and collect hundreds of millions if not billions from holding up passing ships
  • Iran survived Israel's best shot at regime change and responded with enough missiles to break Israel's missile shield and deplete it's interception capacity down to nearly 50%

Syria is a real loss but Assad was always the weakest link and his fall had more to do with his own incompetence than Israeli brilliance, otherwise they would have rolled southern Lebanon the way Al-Jolani rolled Syria.

First off, does Hamas really care about what happens to Assad or Iran? They take Iranian weapons but they also backed the Syrian rebels against Assad, they aren't exactly a full on proxy of Iran like Hezbollah.

Assad, no. Iran and Hezbollah, yes. One needs supplies.

Hamas is Sunni, not Shia, but the shared devotion to destroying Israel gave them an otherwise strange set of Islamic allies.

If anything the fact that Iran was ultimately dragged into the fight despite desperately trying to stay out of it directly is a Hamas W.

Sure, they wanted the whole Islamic world to rise up. The more the merrier. Except for the part where Iran and Hezbollah got their ass handed to them. That's not the result one wants for one's allies.

Hezbollah is in the same position it was in 2006

This is not true. Israel was largely considered to be the loser in that conflict, or at least having underperformed. In 2025, Israel blew the fuck out of Hezbollah after demonstrating that Hezbollah was almost entirely militarily ineffective.

Hezbollah is much weaker than in 2006, and will remain that way if the Israelis aren't exaggerating about their intent.

Houthis are stronger and more influential than ever,

They are doing pretty well, yes. But they are overall the least important bit as demonstrated by the fact that they're having a great time while their allies get wrecked.

Iran survived Israel's best shot at regime change and responded with enough missiles to break Israel's missile shield and deplete it's interception capacity down to nearly 50%

Thanks to Trump, so far yes the regime survives. However, it's in a much weaker position than it was before, and longstanding problems like the economy continue to worsen. I've seen some credible-sounding reports that moderates/reformers are rising in power/prominence due to the embarrassing defeat, and how much Khamenei is in touch with reality is hard to know. His succession will be much more fraught than it would have been if it had happened without the 12-Day War.

Iran's missile production and launching capacities were hammered pretty hard, so you really have to squint to see the silver lining in the dark clouds of "we launched a bunch of our prized military capability at Israel and had nearly zero military effect."

It remains to be seen what Israel's red lines will actually be for e.g. Iran rebuilding certain military capacities. But the IAF demonstrated the ability to conduct air strikes at will and there's little hope for Iran that they can suddenly acquire or develop top-tier air defense systems. And assassinations on the ground are also always a fun fear for Iranian leaders.

Syria is a real loss but Assad was always the weakest link and his fall had more to do with his own incompetence than Israeli brilliance

Who suggested otherwise? Israel was not the primary factor there. The Turks did more, I think. Plus the fact that Iran and Russia both had to back off the level of support given their other military priorities.

It's not a great time for Iran. They spent decades preparing to put up a good fight against Israel and/or the U.S. and in a matter of days they were revealed to be a paper tiger against Israel, with just a dash of U.S. involvement. They can try to pretend they did more damage to Israel than they actually did, but they can't deny their own high losses, or that Israel could do it all again.

Assad, no. Iran and Hezbollah, yes. One needs supplies.

The overwhelming majority of Hamas's supplies are made in Gaza, though. There's a blockade, after all.

This is not true. Israel was largely considered to be the loser in that conflict, or at least having underperformed. In 2025, Israel blew the fuck out of Hezbollah after demonstrating that Hezbollah was almost entirely militarily ineffective.

Yet the ceasefire imposed after 2006 and resulting situation, other than the assassination of Nasrallah, was identical from Hezbollah's perspective. They were bombed one-sidedly after the ceasefire was signed, they were repressed by the Lebanese government and they were portrayed as being incapable of fighting again. If anything the Lebanese government of 2006 was both more powerful and more explicitly anti-Hezbollah than the current one.

To this day the majority of Israelis from northern communities have yet to return and a significant proportion have stated they'll never return. Considering that the goal of the Lebanon War was to return Israelis to the border I'd call that a failure.

When Israel actually blew the fuck out of the PLO their ground forces weren't held up at the first villages they entered, they pushed all the way to Beirut, forced the PLO out of Lebanon and occupied all of southern Lebanon for the next two decades. Whereas this time around they were unable to even conquer the first frontline villages of Khiam and Al-Naqoura without getting, as you say, "blown the fuck out".

I've seen some credible-sounding reports that moderates/reformers are rising in power/prominence due to the embarrassing defeat

All the credible reports I've heard from Iran are that the hardliners are the ones rising in power while the reformers were humiliated by getting betrayed in the middle of negotiations. If your story were accurate we would expect new concessions in negotiations whereas in reality Iran hasn't moved an inch and has refused to even reopen negotiations.

However, it's in a much weaker position than it was before, and longstanding problems like the economy continue to worsen.

An odd comparison, how is Israel's economy doing? Last I checked the Houthis had entirely shut down the Port of Eilat, the Bazan Gas Refinery is still partially shut down more than a month after eating Iranian missiles and the Israeli deficit is gigantic. And this is in a world with unlimited American and European backing, what do you think happens to Israel's economy in a world where it's trade partners turn hostile?

Iran's missile production and launching capacities were hammered pretty hard, so you really have to squint to see the silver lining in the dark clouds of "we launched a bunch of our prized military capability at Israel and had nearly zero military effect."

Iran's missile production and launching capacities are quite literally underground. There's zero evidence that they took significant losses in that respect, whereas the fact that it took less than 10 missiles on day 12 to land hits when on day 1 it took more than a hundred proves that Israel's air defenses were collapsing. If anything it's the Israeli strikes that had zero military effect.

This take is directly contradicted by the NYT article I cite. I'm not sure exactly how accurate that portrayal was or is now, but the IRGC hardliners look like they just died a lot.

clearly you missed the funeral where half the "dead IRGC hardliners" miraculously turned up alive. Again: if the hardliners lost big then where are the diplomatic concessions?

It remains to be seen what Israel's red lines will actually be for e.g. Iran rebuilding certain military capacities. But the IAF demonstrated the ability to conduct air strikes at will and there's little hope for Iran that they can suddenly acquire or develop top-tier air defense systems.

Israel has demonstrated that it can launch missiles from over the horizon and hit targets in Iran, but they don't have the ability to actually fly directly over Iran dropping bombs, something that would be necessary to inflict any damage to their underground strategic infrastructure.

If anything, the fact that Israel barked so hard about the possibility of resuming strikes is another indication that they lost. Because Israel doesn't bark when they want to bomb Syria, they just do it. Syria actually has zero air defenses, and there is actual footage of Israeli jets flying freely over Syria dropping bombs. There is no such footage of Israeli jets over Iran.

that Israel could do it all again.

Again, if Israel didn't receive an ass-whooping from Iran they would still be bombing Iran. Remember, Trump also told them to stop bombing Syria and Lebanon and they were ignored.

There's a blockade, after all.

You think those tunnels to Egypt were for tourists? This is a decades-long relationship.

Whereas this time around they were unable to even conquer the first frontline villages of Khiam and Al-Naqoura

They were "unable" or that wasn't their plan? I'm just aware of what the general sentiment was about how things went in 2006 vs. 2025 and in the latter it's widely agreed Hezbollah got beaten to an embarrassing degree. The fact that Israel could do it without a major ground invasion adds to Hezbollah's embarrassment.

All the credible reports I've heard from Iran are that the hardliners are the ones rising in power while the reformers were humiliated by getting betrayed in the middle of negotiations. If your story were accurate we would expect new concessions in negotiations whereas in reality Iran hasn't moved an inch and has refused to even reopen negotiations.

I haven't seen a good story on things for like a month now. It's funny to see the sentence "hardliners rising in power" since that's their default position for the last very long while, minus a bit when Rohani looked like he might be succeeding. My belief is that it's pretty unlikely Iran goes the pragmatist route and we see a renewal of the conflict.

The real negotiations with Iran tend to happen in secret. That was true of the JCPOA and I imagine it will be true for anything else. They have until almost the end of August to deal with the E3 re: snapback sanctions.

I will say shit like this is hilarious in that Iran's secular nationalists used to run the place, but were friendly with Israel. If the theocracy goes there's no reason to be in conflict with Israel! That article is also funny because it never seems to mention the fact that your average would-be protestor knows that they're likely to get gunned down right now if they try anything for any reason, so the lack of protests might not be because of greater solidarity.

An odd comparison, how is Israel's economy doing?

Do you have any idea how weak Iran's economy is? Israel is orders of magnitude better off, which is why it can win a war against a country nearly 10x its size.

clearly you missed the funeral where half the "dead IRGC hardliners" miraculously turned up alive.

Two survivors is not "half" of what was claimed, lol. There were a lot of coffins.

Iran's missile production and launching capacities are quite literally underground. There's zero evidence that they took significant losses in that respect, whereas the fact that it took less than 10 missiles on day 12 to land hits when on day 1 it took more than a hundred proves that Israel's air defenses were collapsing. If anything it's the Israeli strikes that had zero military effect.

Ok now you're just being delusional and I have to doubt you know what a "credible" source is here. Iran's launchers are not all underground. That's total nonsense. You have to believe that the IDF is just lying I guess and that all those bombs they dropped didn't do much.

Israel has demonstrated that it can launch missiles from over the horizon and hit targets in Iran, but they don't have the ability to actually fly directly over Iran dropping bombs, something that would be necessary to inflict any damage to their underground strategic infrastructure.

So the IAF is just lying about this? Also they were dropping JDAMs and bunker busters. There are photos of the damage.

Because Israel doesn't bark when they want to bomb Syria, they just do it.

You're confused about how Israel decides to do things in light of U.S. pressure and risk. Israel does not want to piss Trump off about Iran.

There is no such footage of Israeli jets over Iran.

Oh so you don't believe the footage of Iran shooting down F-35? The IAF had drones over Iranian airspace, which are much easier to shoot down. Hard to believe they didn't have faster combat aircraft dropping munitions. I'd imagine that the aircraft stayed much higher in Iranian airspace because of the risk being much higher than in Syria.

Again, if Israel didn't receive an ass-whooping from Iran they would still be bombing Iran.

In your mind Iran came out better here? Israel called off aircraft mid-flight because Trump demanded it, but you think Israel was actually glad to stop.

That's incredible. What are you reading that causes you to credulously believe Iranian propaganda like this?

You think those tunnels to Egypt were for tourists

If we're to believe the IDF those have been out of commission since they took over the Philadelphi Corridor over a year ago. Also, both Israeli casualty reports and Qassam combat footage overwhelmingly shows the use of indigenous IEDs and other weapons that could only be manufactured locally. It would be silly for a cell based organization like Hamas to depend on imports.

They were "unable" or that wasn't their plan? I'm just aware of what the general sentiment was about how things went in 2006 vs. 2025 and in the latter it's widely agreed Hezbollah got beaten to an embarrassing degree.

The IDF very clearly tried to take Al-Khiam for a photo-op at the former detention center and failed. The primary difference between 2006 and 2025 is expectations: they both featured failed ground offensives but in the former case Netanyahu avoided making big promises about destroying Hezbollah forever like Ehud Olmert did (though I do recall him claiming he'd occupy everything south of the Litani, a goal he fell well short of) whereas Hezbollah set a goal beyond simply surviving that they weren't able to meet.

Ok now you're just being delusional and I have to doubt you know what a "credible" source is here. Iran's launchers are not all underground. That's total nonsense. You have to believe that the IDF is just lying I guess and that all those bombs they dropped didn't do much.

T&P claims that JDAMs were used but the citation used to "prove" this is an article which only ever claims that jets took off carrying JDAMs, with none of the strikes identified as using bunker busters or even regular bombs. Nearly all were above ground soft targets like buildings and the strikes on underground facilities were aimed at entrances rather than the repeated direct strikes on bunkers one would expect if Israel actually had total freedom of operation over Iran. Ironically even your own pro-Israeli sources basically support my thesis.

So the IAF is just lying about this? Also they were dropping JDAMs and bunker busters. There are photos of the damage.

So far your only source is the IDF and people who uncritically believe claims made by the IDF. And yes, the IAF is definitely lying because by day six they were reduced to reposting footage of destroyed missile launchers from day one. If they actually owned the skies and were picking off Iranian launchers all war then why did all the footage come out right at the beginning and then get reused?

You're confused about how Israel decides to do things in light of U.S. pressure and risk. Israel does not want to piss Trump off about Iran.

If Iran were legitimately totally defenseless then why would Israel care about what Trump thinks? Again, they've had no problem pissing him off about Lebanon and Syria. If anything Trump has been significantly more friendly to Jolani than the Iranians so you'd think pissing him off about Syria would be more risky. For that matter, why would he care? Every indication is that he had no problem with Israel one sidedly bombing Iran forever, it was only when Iran started landing counterpunches that he became interested in deescalation.

The IAF had drones over Iranian airspace, which are much easier to shoot down. Hard to believe they didn't have faster combat aircraft dropping munitions. I'd imagine that the aircraft stayed much higher in Iranian airspace because of the risk being much higher than in Syria.

On the flipside, they had drones that were shot down so it's just as easy to imagine that Netanyahu simply didn't bother taking the risk. In this case the burden of proof that Israel was dropping bombs in Iranian airspace is on you, since basically all of the identified strikes look like the result of air launched missiles, not bombs.

In your mind Iran came out better here? Israel called off aircraft mid-flight because Trump demanded it, but you think Israel was actually glad to stop.

On the first day Israel went for a decapitation strike followed by regime change while the Iranians were totally caught with their pants down. Yet the regime did not collapse and after a few hours of chaos they reorganized and proceeded to return fire in sufficient volume to break Israeli AD nearly every day. They hit strategic sites at will, including the Weizmann Institute, the Bazan oil refinery and Camp Moshe Dayan. Not with piddly Hamas bottle rockets but seriously destructive ballistic missiles, a single of which was able to destroy enough real estate in Tel Aviv to leave 2000 Israelis homeless.

In contrast, the quality of Israeli targets fell considerably; on day 1 they were wiping out commanders with ease, on day 12 they were reduced to hitting a giant clock in Tehran and hitting a prison, killing a bunch of dissidents and achieving the nearly impossible feat of making Iranian dissidents cheer for the IRGC. America blew through nearly a quarter of the GLOBAL ballistic missile interceptor stockpile, suggesting that Israel would already be defenseless by day 12 if not for American help.

Had the war continued it would have continued to get worse and worse for Israel. Fortunately Israel was able to leverage the threat of direct American offensive involvement beyond choreographed bombings that result in zero injuries, otherwise the Iranians would have had little reason to agree to a deal.

Right off the bat, let's see if you can admit a clear factual error or two. I really should have done this before writing the rest, but ah well.

Do you acknowledge that Iran's ballistic missile production facilities and launchers are not all underground? This is a very easy one.

Do you acknowledge that the volume of Iran's launches against Israel dropped off considerably? Here's a clue: https://jinsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Iranian-Ballistic-Missile-Estimates-6-26-2025-6.pdf

Frankly it's remarkable to see someone try to flip the script on one of the most one-sided wars in history, but then I suppose the Egyptians tried to pretend they had won the Yom Kippur War.

Also, both Israeli casualty reports and Qassam combat footage overwhelmingly shows the use of indigenous IEDs and other weapons that could only be manufactured locally. It would be silly for a cell based organization like Hamas to depend on imports.

Never did I say the majority of their stock was Iranian. But Iran has been a major supporter for decades.

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/19/hamas-used-iranian-produced-weapons-in-october-7-terror-attack-in-israel/

https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/captured-documents-reveal-how-iran-smuggles-weapons-via-syria-and-jordan/

The IDF very clearly tried to take Al-Khiam for a photo-op at the former detention center and failed.

That's not particularly relevant in evaluating the overall status at the end of the conflict, where Israel overwhelmingly kicked Hezbollah in the nuts by killing its leader, a bunch of its personnel, maimed a shit ton more of them, and also significantly reduced their missile stockpile, all while taking relatively light casualties and rendering the missile threat mostly ineffective.

Tellingly, they didn't do much to help out their pals in Tehran. Weird way to behave if actually they weren't hurting so badly. Kinda defeats the point of having an alliance.

If Iran were legitimately totally defenseless then why would Israel care about what Trump thinks?

Why would Israel care about what it's single most important ally thinks about a conflict it has been assisting with? Seriously? The stuff in Syria is small potatoes.

On the flipside, they had drones that were shot down so it's just as easy to imagine that Netanyahu simply didn't bother taking the risk. In this case the burden of proof that Israel was dropping bombs in Iranian airspace is on you, since basically all of the identified strikes look like the result of air launched missiles, not bombs.

The most retarded bit of logic here is that if we, for the sake of argument, grant that you're correct about only IAF drones poking around Iranian airspace then, wow, the IAF is really capable of doing a lot of damage to buildings using air-launched missiles at scale. Also, hitting the Mashhad airport at 1400 miles strongly implies operating within Iranian airspace even with ALBMs.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/israels-air-superiority-lets-strike-191600442.html

So all those photos of IAF aircraft loaded with bombs were just for propaganda purposes? Why? Who are they trying to convince? The U.S. and Iranian militaries know the reality regardless.

There's no good reason to believe the IAF is lying here, but you need it to fit your highly evidence-challenged view that actually Iran was the one winning this conflict. The real irony here is that the Iranians don't contest that the IAF was operating in Iranian airspace, they just pretended to shoot an F-35 or two down. You're doing more work than even the Iranian propagandists!

On the flipside, they had drones that were shot down so it's just as easy to imagine that Netanyahu simply didn't bother taking the risk. In this case the burden of proof that Israel was dropping bombs in Iranian airspace is on you, since basically all of the identified strikes look like the result of air launched missiles, not bombs.

Why send drones on obvious suicide missions if air defenses are not suppressed much at all?

The IAF demolished large buildings and took out at least one command bunker, we know. Hard and expensive to do that with merely missiles.

How many missiles do ya reckon this took? Would the IAF really use its fancy LORAs on a TV broadcaster?

https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/israel-iran-missile-attacks-photos-irib-cfc83190c9bc8f84db79f7624c1309b0

Elbit Systems' share price rose by 5.43% in New York on Friday, and is currently up 5.94% on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-us-weapons-prove-themselves-in-iran-strikes-1001512893

There's plenty of evidence Israel dropped bombs in Iran, just none you find compelling enough that you have to accept it. You resist the obvious because your narrative collapses if actually the IAF did have air dominance and you can pretend they were going to run out of ALBMs before Iran ran out of its ballistic missiles.

Every indication is that he had no problem with Israel one sidedly bombing Iran forever, it was only when Iran started landing counterpunches that he became interested in deescalation.

Trump's change in preference came right after the U.S. strikes on the nuclear facilities, obviously. The volume of Iranian missile strikes was going down and Israel was not taking meaningful damage relative to Iran.

On the first day Israel went for a decapitation strike followed by regime change

Israel did not expect to get regime change that easily. Come on now. As far as we know, the Supreme Leader was not targeted (whether by impossibility or choice I'm not sure).

they reorganized and proceeded to return fire in sufficient volume to break Israeli AD nearly every day. They hit strategic sites at will

No, they very much did not. All those missiles, so few strategic sites hit. Blowing up grandmas doesn't win wars, even when they were able to do that.

on day 12 they were reduced to hitting a giant clock in Tehran

This is backwards logic. The IAF could afford to start hitting secondary targets on day 12 because they had been so successful the previous 11 days. It's not like they suddenly couldn't hit Tehran, as you've pointed out.

Had the war continued it would have continued to get worse and worse for Israel. Fortunately Israel was able to leverage the threat of direct American offensive involvement beyond choreographed bombings that result in zero injuries, otherwise the Iranians would have had little reason to agree to a deal.

There was no "deal" here. It was just an unofficial ceasefire. If Iran was on the verge of really turning the tide against their main enemy who did a surprise attack and killed a bunch of its top leaders and destroyed a bunch of their military and nuclear sites, why would they have stopped instead of getting even? They knew the U.S. really did not want to get drawn in beyond the attack on the nuclear sites. Why would Iran let Israel get away with it?

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I think you're 80% right, but they underestimated how hard the counter-punch would be, and now the (original) plan is dead. Israel is likely going to be right back on track to normalize relations with their neighbors in a few years, they lost more manpower and leadership than anticipated, and although yes they won some major international sympathy, for Hamas themselves it doesn't look like they will be able (or allowed) to reassert themselves as the leadership of Gaza again (because they'd just wait 15 years and then try the same playbook a second/third time). So yeah, part "success", but if the ultimate goal is an overthrow of Israel then I think it's a bit of a wash strategically. Of course, we should say that the Hamas plan is absolutely cynical and even evil. It's all the more sad that Israel reacted so, well, predictably.

At any rate people are not as scope insensitive as you say. If anything, isn't the Gaza war a great example of how people are sensitive to scope? Before the war, it was pretty common for Israel to have a rough 10 to 1 ratio for retaliation. Kind of a crappy baseline for human rights, but that's what the reality was usually. And sure enough, right about when they blew past that standard, was right when sympathies started to swing. At the beginning there was plenty of support because most people could recognize it's their 9/11, and states don't respond meekly to things like that. Even as we speak Israeli support continues to slowly ebb, and that's because what, 1200 Israelis died, and they've killed more than 12,000. We're up to what, almost 60k? I've called it something like 'callousness bordering on genocide' for a while now, which upsets a lot of people on both sides (evidence in favor?) but I think that continues to be true... but about a few months more of it and I think even I might finally be calling it a genocide. There's a fixed amount of food that must be imported for survival, and Israel isn't meeting that, and so it's obviously their responsibility. And seriously, Israel, what's the reconstruction plan? There was a recent blowup over a giant humanitarian camp plan, which is already controversial, but Netanyahu vetoed the plan because... he thinks the military can do it faster? Meanwhile, nothing happens. Yikes.

I think even I might finally be calling it a genocide. There's a fixed amount of food that must be imported for survival, and Israel isn't meeting that, and so it's obviously their responsibility.

Is this a genocide?

Loosely, yes. Although in the case of Israel and Gaza, Israel fully controls all the entry and exit points, and in theory controls (and asserts the sole right to control) all the internal area as well, whereas WWI Germany still had options, just worse ones, so we can't shift quite the same burden of blame on their opponents when they themselves can pick some up. So for those reasons I'd shy away from using the term as such; overall however there's a reason WWI is a major step toward "total war" as a concept. I mean we could get in the weeds about the different 'axes' for which we judge a genocide, but I'd say it falls on the 'spectrum' somewhere.

Huh! Interesting. What about a siege of a medieval city - not a fortress with just a military garrison, but an actual significant permanent settlement, probably including nearby farmers, villagers, etc who fled for the "safety" of the town when the attackers showed up - when the attacking army encircles the city and doesn't allow anyone or anything in or out?

Depends on the siege. Some effectively were genocides of a sort. They could even be religious. Anciently Carthage, as traditionally recorded at least, certainly counts. I mean they tore down all the buildings, killed or sold into slavery all the inhabitants, and salted the earth after (expensive, yet actually very effective, at destroying future crop yields). That's like, textbook genocide, right? Though I'd note that one of the aforementioned axes that deserves calling out is the type of 'intentionality' behind it. In a siege, are you, the invader, secretly (or not so secretly) hoping they don't surrender because you hate them, or are you just annoyed that the city is in your way and resisting? And do you view the civilian occupants of the city as unrelated/irrelevant, as hostages to take or to punish if you can't get to the military opponents, or the actual enemy themselves? Did you actually kill lots of civilians, or did you just burn down their houses and leave? Did you encourage rape and looting and murder, or was there an attempt at discipline? (And then there's the Mongols, who would commit atrocities on purpose, but out of pure, heartless political calculus to maintain their reputation and reinforce their rule, which is almost like a third way)

To a significant extent it's a bit of a loaded word, especially due to modern-day connotations that said genocide or pogrom is state-supported or directed, and I think some leftist scholars and activists go a little too crazy in trying to slice and dice and define it (often in overly broad terms) or even predict it in an attempt to stop it internally in its nascent state (I view the "Ten Stages" as a bad example of this). The fact remains, however, that severity, intentionality, passion vs premeditation, causality, etc. all matter when we assign punishment for crimes like murder on an individual level. We see this in a very real way in state sentencing guidelines and the criminal code! First vs second degree murder vs manslaughter sounds, casually, like a ridiculous distinction until you actually attend a trial with all the messy details. Why not attempt to consider the same factors when it comes to group actions, especially if there's a latent implication that other groups or states have a moral duty to intervene at some point along the way? The bystander effect for states is just as real as it is for individuals, right?

I think the use, or even abuse, of the term as a political cudgel is sometimes cynical, sometimes idealistic, but virtually everyone other than the hardcore realpolitikers can probably agree that we can't totally dodge the ideas even if the words are a little fuzzy. So the temptation is there to treat it like a woke, bleeding-heart liberal thing, but that's unfair.

Indeed, I think it does depend on the siege. But also (with notable exceptions) it rarely happened when the besieged surrendered in good order.

Realistically anyway, the only hope anyway is that the attacker's forces are drawn away, starves or that a friendly army comes to relieve them. No defenders ever actively won a seiege, although many skills played for time and got one of the above 3 relief.

There is nothing I've seen that would indicate that people somehow became not ok with it once the ratio went slightly over 10 to 1. Rather it seemed to be that Israel became mainstream news, that's all. People whose special interest was the Israel-Palestine conflict have been harping about "genocidal settlers" well before the war.

that's because what, 1200 Israelis died, and they've killed more than 12,000. We're up to what, almost 60k?

You really can't compare raw numbers, given a) Israel tried to keep its own people alive, b) Hamas tries to put its own people in harms way, c) the war is being fought in Gaza and not in Israel proper, and d) Israel is the stronger faction. Nobody would say, "Well, only X US soldiers and civilians were killed in Pearl Harbor, and now that the US is winning in the Philippines, the casualty ratio is shifting significantly, that means the US is doing warfare wrong and needs to sue for peace".

If you exclude civilian ship crews, the total number of US civilian deaths in WWII is around 100, and single-digits if you only count state territories at the time (not Alaska or Hawaii). British civilian deaths, despite the Blitz, were still pretty small compared to Germany and Japan. Civilian casualty ratios are a terrible metric unless you want to be an Axis (or Soviet) apologist.

But we don't exclude them do we?

The international laws of warfare are somewhat vague about blockades sinking cargo vessels carrying materiel in times of war: it's something the Allies did their fair share of too. Even if you include them, it's on the order of 10k deaths, and still weights poorly against the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, and I think the point still stands.

I think it is entirely reasonable to hold Israel to a higher standard than Hamas. If I held the Israel government only to the standard of Hamas (whom I consider murderous thugs who need to be wiped from the face of the earth), then I would have to concede that it would be a good thing if NATO invaded Israel and occupied them for a few decades until they learned better.

Per WP, there have been about 70k Gazans and 1k IDF killed since Israel responded to the Oct-7 attacks. Let's assume that 40k of the Gazans were civilians as a ballpark number.

The ratio at which your own soldiers die relative to enemy civilians is reflective of the value system of the society waging the war, what the factor before the count in the utility function is for enemy civilians and your soldiers.

Approximately, the relation of death tolls should reflect the quotient of these values. (The distribution of tactical options is also relevant, of course, if you only ever have to decide between two of your soldiers and one civilian, you might end up killing a zillion civilians and none of your soldiers despite valuing them equally, but I think it is unlikely that this distorts the effects too much in reality.)

A toy example would be that you are harassed by an enemy sniper in a building (back when Gaza had buildings), which is also expected to be inhabited by civilians. You can either call an airstrike, thereby killing an estimated X civilians, or storm the building with infantry, losing an estimated Y soldiers in the process.

I am not saying that you need to value enemy civilians as much as your troops. Few armies would gamble a soldier to rescue an enemy civilian (probably non-allied civilian would be a more appropriate phrasing) in a double or nothing scenario.

But if you have 40 civilans dead for every one of your soldiers, then it becomes reasonable to suppose that you have a callous disregard for the lives of the civilian population, and that is the point where the IDF is right now.

Yes, basically this. If anything, the level of care given to variously 'friendly', 'neutral', or 'hostile' civilians is one of the most direct indicators of how morally the society is treating war. No war is perfect, civilian casualties are inevitable, even in significant numbers. But surely some conclusions can be drawn from the decisions made, both at a tactical level (e.g. what rules of engagement are you following, and what risk tolerance do you have, how high a confidence level do you require) and a general level (e.g. how often does Israel use bombs larger than necessary, how much exposure do you accept in terms of boots on the ground, and so forth). None of this should be construed to mean that I don't understand those real trade-offs.

Pre-war, what I'm trying to say is they had struck some kind of balance. While you could try and judge that on its own, we could be a little lazy and just call it a local, contextual "baseline" level of care. And it was already pretty lopsided. I realize 10 to 1 is an oversimplification, but that's how it is. Just picking out a google result from 2014, not fully randomly but partially (googled IDF riot deaths in a 2014-2016 date span, first relevant result with figures), an article has this to say:

...fighting that has killed 32 Israeli soldiers and two civilians, a Thai guest worker and more than 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Militants have launched more than 2,000 rockets toward Israel in the renewed fighting, which was stoked by the kidnap-murder of three Israeli teenagers and the apparent revenge killing of a Palestinian teen.

Note that despite the large number of rockets, few people are typically killed as a result because of Iron Dome (whether you think the rockets are normally launched because of this, or in spite of this, is a separate question). But look at those overall numbers for a second. A series of highly emotional murders (cycle of violence) sparks riots which sparks a mini-war. And at our snapshot in time, we have 32-25 dead Israelis/non-Palestinians, and over 700 Palestinians dead. That's a 20x ratio in this case! Not uncommon for the region.

Now let it sink in for a second that the current ratio, as the result of the now almost 2 year war, is up to 35x. I know numbers can lie, but... I really think that the figure should at the very least offer a strong hint as to what's going on, yeah? This seems to align with the anecdotes we get about IDF decisions about use of force on almost all levels. They are decisions, at the end of the day, not inevitabilities, at least within a certain range. Yes, I know the numbers are fuzzy, and you can slice it different ways. There's wiggle room. But historically for modern conflicts, these are pretty high numbers (Gazan density makes exact comparisons tricky) as a quick glance at military vs civilian casualties in recent wars such as Ukraine, Azerbaijan, even Syria over the course of the whole war, can according to some estimates get under 1x, though if you consider 20k Hamas fighters killed as is the Israeli claim, the ratio dips to a "mere" 2-3x or so military to civilian. Again I don't want to oversell these numbers, but the general trends combined with what I've read (from both sides) about current Israeli tactics and strategy seems to point pretty strongly on the side of callousness. The sad truth is a situation of "so what if they are using five human shields, kill them all," like the infamous trolley problem, varies in response to how sympathetically you view the human shields - dare I say you can actually use it as a rough barometer?

I think it is entirely reasonable to hold Israel to a higher standard than Hamas. If I held the Israel government only to the standard of Hamas (whom I consider murderous thugs who need to be wiped from the face of the earth), then I would have to concede that it would be a good thing if NATO invaded Israel and occupied them for a few decades until they learned better.

No offense, but this is insane moon-logic to me, and I need help grokking it. It's completely alien to the traditional logic of international law - “it is impossible to visualize the conduct of hostilities in which one side would be bound by rules of warfare without benefitting from them, and the other side would benefit from rules of warfare without being bound by them.” (H. Lauterpacht, “The Limits of Operation of the Law of War” (1953) 30 British Year Book of Int’l Law 206, 212).

“it is impossible to visualize the conduct of hostilities in which one side would be bound by rules of warfare without benefitting from them, and the other side would benefit from rules of warfare without being bound by them"

However, Israel factually is bound by rules of warfare without benefitting from them; while Hamas factually does benefit from rules of warfare without being bound by them ('there is a class of citizen that laws bind but do not protect, and then there is one that is protected by laws that do not bind').

Note that in the West, citizens in the latter class know it, and thus are far more likely to support Palestine- because not doing so is a refutation of their rights to that special protection in their own societies. Queers for Palestine is perfectly coherent through this lens.

The actual solution is to simply withdraw the protection that society has- if they don't want to follow the laws of war, they must lose the protection of those laws. Laws against genocide are there to protect a society that goes to war and loses from being slaughtered to the last; if a society wants to go to war and not fight that way, the law against genocide must then no longer apply. There is no right to the self-determination of a people without first respecting their right to self-destruction.

I think that this hinges a lot on the distinction between soldiers and civilians. An enemy soldier for a side which does not respect the Geneva conventions is owed nothing more than a quick death when captured.

By contrast, non-combatants have a (limited) right not to be injured by war no matter whose side they are nominally on. If a bunch of neolithic tribe members were isekaied to the trenches of WW1, they would be entitled to protection, you can not just say "obviously their tribe is not a signatory to the Geneva conventions, so it is fine to bomb them".

It is hard to fight an enemy on equal footing when you are bound by some moral constraints, but often, either the moral constraints are not all that hampering (allowing advancing Jewish GI's to carry out mass shootings against German civilians in retaliation for what the Nazi's did would have been wrong, but it would also not have given the Allies much of an edge), or the fight is very much not on equal footing.

If a police unit is trying to catch a band of letter bombers, they have a lot of advances over their enemies. Sure, there might occasionally be situations where the best tactical option would be for them to send bombs to the band themselves, but they can still win without that.

Or perhaps your enemy is good at hiding amongst civilians, but bad at killing their opponents.

Keep in mind how many rockets were launched by Hamas from Gaza against Israel with the intent to kill civilians. Just looking at the deaths without considering the causation of the numbers leads to poor judgements. Context matters.

You can't assign immorality to the side with greater competence against the side with demonstrated malicious intent with a low success rates.

Let's put it another way. How many Israeli combatants died in the recent war with Iran? How many Iranian civilians?

Good luck dividing by zero.

The sheer malice of Hamas is pretty much how they convinced me that they should be utterly destroyed.

I think that in the missile exchanges with Iran, there was little in the way of trading risk to soldiers vs risk to civilians.

I also believe that in the context of Gaza, a significant fraction of civilian deaths are the result of decisions with such trade-offs. Infantry is vastly less deadly to civilians than bombs are, but of infantry is also much more at risk from Hamas than bomber pilots are.

The sheer malice of Hamas is pretty much how they convinced me that they should be utterly destroyed.

I agree; Hamas is just not a "normal" actor that can be viewed the way an opposing side usually is. Unfortunately, the same is true of the Gaza-based Palestinians. There's a reason Hamas has been in control the way they have been, and some of their rivals are just as bloodthirsty. There's not much room for compromise under these circumstances, where on average Israel cares more about the lives of Palestinians than Hamas does.

I think that in the missile exchanges with Iran, there was little in the way of trading risk to soldiers vs risk to civilians.

In the missile exchanges with Iran, Israel signed up for accepting that their interceptions would not be perfect and some level of civilian casualties would be suffered. As it turned out, they lost far fewer than they were prepared for (I don't know what the number was that they projected, or that they were willing to accept). Israel was prepared, reportedly, to put boots on the ground to take out nuclear sites if the U.S. did not lend a helping hand. That would have placed some hundreds, if not thousands, of troops in harm's way.

The IAF also did not lose a single manned combat aircraft, which beat their expectations.

Infantry is vastly less deadly to civilians than bombs are

Keep in mind you're comparing "moral infantryman with overmatch in urban warfare" to "precision bombing at scale." Against an opponent with basically the world's best tunnel network.

I do not know enough about how exactly the Israeli military has conducted its operations in Gaza to make a confident judgement. But from my experience in the US Army, the Israelis are clearly trying pretty hard to minimize collateral damage. As hard as the US military does? I'm not sure.

To roughly paraphrase a sentiment I saw on twitter, every dead Israeli soldier is a blood sacrifice for the Palestinian people.

This whole conflict is immensely frustrating and I don't know how far Israel would have to go before I was forced to reconsider my support for them. But I do think one must keep in mind that Israel had to fight several wars of survival against pretty overwhelming odds, that the Arab countries maintain the identity of Palestinian Arabs (as opposed to Levantine) as a useful weapon, and that making forced deportation of a population (i.e. ethnic cleansing) a crime against humanity kinda makes it impossible to deal with a persistently hostile group in any "legal" way.

What's worse, forcing the migration of a population one is at risk of continual war with, or killing them war by war?

I mean, you absolutely can assign greater culpability to the more effective side.

I have a new kitten who is just three months old, and a one year old cat. The kitten loves attacking the bigger cat, but I have to be very careful to keep him from hurting her.

That being said, as Hamas’s intent is seemingly “genocide all Israelis,” I do have very little sympathy for them.

I mean, you absolutely can assign greater culpability to the more effective side.

You cannot do so without, as your cat example demonstrates, having a holistic understanding of all the relevant factors at play.

The proposed loss ratio standard is a metric worth considering, but it is hardly a good single metric. If Hamas was better at fighting, more Israeli soldiers and civilians would be dead because they have tried, but not succeeded most of the time.

But if you have 40 civilans dead for every one of your soldiers, then it becomes reasonable to suppose that you have a callous disregard for the lives of the civilian population

If the enemy sniper somehow is always accompanied by 40 civilians, which one of us is callously disregarding their lives - me or the sniper? It seems pretty clear which one of us would prefer there to be fewer civilians on the site and which one would like more.

Unfortunately, if your enemy does not give a fuck about civilians, that does not mean that you do not have to give a fuck either. If a police department solved a hostage situation by bombing the building and killing everyone inside, they could claim that actually who was really responsible for the civilian deaths was the hostage taker. Still, it would reflect horribly on them.

As an aside, I don't recall that the IDF has made much of a credible move to get the civilians out of the Gaza war. If they had offered a ICRC run shelter where the IDF kept the peace to every Gazan who did not want to die for Hamas when they started invading, that would have updated me a lot towards "the IDF does their best to keep civilians safe". Instead, they told them "we are fighting here, go there" sometimes, but were generally unwilling to allow them into places where Israel would be responsible for their needs.

A police department's job is to protect the civilians of their state. An army's job is not to protect the civilians of other states.

Isnt the Hamas plan to let their citizens get killed by Israelis while they run a propaganda campaign that gets Western leftists to send them money so their leadership can live cushy lives in Dubai and London?

Nah, I do not think that the Hamas leaders had a financial motive for Oct-7, at least not raking in donations from Westerners. Before the attacks, Hamas leaders were living the good life: getting their cuts of bribes or taxes/protection money from the Gazans, as well as skimming of donations, while being left in peace by Nethanyahu.

Now, they no longer get cuts from Gazan "taxes" or foreign donations to Gaza, and on top of that they have to worry about Mossad murdering them. Still very much first world problems compared to their citizens, but likely not an improvement in material wealth.

I mean more long-game. I suppose my view of Palestine is colored by my run-ins with it's propaganda and activist-industrial complex.

go into Gaza with the goal of occupying it for a few decades (in the knowledge that they will get a lot of their soldiers killed in the process)

Isn't that pretty much what they're doing now?

In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted between states. The loser gives concessions to the winner, with the assumption that even a bad peace is better than a bad war, that ending hostilities - even for the moment - is the best way to bring about revanchist policy.

Modest nitpick, but not quite. In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted by states, but between nations, with the distinction being the degree of political support for the state that allows the state to engage in broder, 'more total,' war.

The state is the conductor, and the negotiator, but the state's capacity is more than the state itself. The state's capacity also derives from outsiders willingness to support the state, and that derived from people, both subjects and outsiders. This was because Clausewitz was speaking from the the aftermath of the French Revolution and the rise of nationalism, which was a revolution in military affairs in and of itself that was so disruptive that it was part of what pushed Clausewitz to his efforts.

This distinction matters because the political will/political support that matters, particularly in a democractic context, can vary by policy by policy. The political support that may allow a great deal of acceptance of costs in Policy A, will not necessarily extent to Policy B, even if Policy B offers larger [gains] at lower [costs].

Seventy-five years later and the Arabs might as well be Ewoks against the Empire.

Fated to win decisively with the assistance of telegenic Western-coded young adult protagonists designed to encourage self-projection fantasies?

There exists a hope in the Palestinian cause, that there will be a tipping point where they can present to the international community of some Israeli atrocity that will bring about a external intervention.

I assume the hope they are holding out is not for external intervention on their side, but an end of external intervention on Israel's. If governments in the US and Europe were compelled by popular pressure to stop supporting Israel with materiel, money and intelligence, could it really keep going against the weight of its neighbours as it is going now?

Not at all. If the international community was neutral, all the Gazans would die of their own inability to produce any food or trade of value. They only exist as an entity because of large influxes of foreign aid.

Yes. Israël is a wealthy country and can pay cash for their weapons.

Ok, then why are we supporting them?

It's an unsinkable aircraft carrier whose location checks 3 regional powers that outnumber them at least 9:1- Iran (obvious), Russia (not quite as obvious), and Egypt (if a blockade/freedom of movement on the Suez needed to be enforced).

They are a good ally in the region, and we like our allies to be strong. If we decided to stop being an ally Israel would still be able to defend themselves. They have nukes!

North Korea also has nukes, and I imagine an Israel without American support would, in the best case scenario, look a lot like North Korea.

Except I doubt the upper echelons of Israeli society would tolerate living in North Korea, so it probably would simply cease to exist like South Africa, another country whose nukes were of little use.

Why would you expect Israel, a liberal democracy, to become an impoverished totalitarian dictatorship solely because we stopped providing them military aid? How would that make them safer from invasion?

It wouldn't just be military aid, it would also be the diplomatic cover. If the American President had the foreign policy sensibilities of a Mamdani or a Fuentes then Israel would be instantly sanctioned and isolated. Considering Israel is entirely dependent on imports they wouldn't last long. At a minimum it would be impossible under such circumstances to maintain a standard of living comparable to what it manages today.

Remember that the US also pays Egypt and Jordan billions of dollars in aid every year as protection money for Israel. The real bill of protecting them is far higher than just the cost of the bombs.

Not really how weapons sales work in the modern world. Yes, you can get some weapons anywhere, but major systems require government permission to be sold, even by private companies (based in the country in question). It's always felt a little odd to me, but there's a certain logic to it.

There are quite a number of countries with large arms industries. The logic of 'surely nobody would sell them weapons' is not supported by history.

It doesn't matter because they don't actually believe a lack of support alone would suffice.

That's why they call for South Africa style sanctions and boycotts.

The aid point is just the first step, and a way to deflect the charge that they care disproportionately about Israel due to antisemitism. And fair point on that I guess. But it is just the thin end of the wedge.

Honestly I'm not familiar enough with it - were the South Africa boycotts and/or sanctions actually effective in ending apartheid?

No. South Africa was defeated because the white minority fell too low causing the counterinsurgency effort to become increasingly unsustainable, pushing the moderate faction in South African politics to sue for peace.

I feel like within 24 hours of the first meaningful strike against Israel by a local belligerent the whole artifice would just spin up in reverse at which point Israelis were the oppressed not the oppressors and the current Western Palestinian Aficionados would just reverse their judgements.

Who would spin up this? Israel's current western opponents certainly would not unless it was the US that attacked Israel.

Moving further into a true pariah status does not engender sympathy. The further a nation is moved into Certified Rogue State™ category the easier it becomes for people to justify and excuse hostility against it. Bad Guys get what they deserve. A high degree of tragedy in relation to their offense is required to turn Bad Guy into sympathetic character. For Israel, without the Certified Rogue State™ status, a reversal among Palestinian Aficionados might require something like tens of thousands of casualties from a chemical gas attack in Tel Aviv during a peace summit.

It's been 30 years since the end of apartheid in South Africa, yet considering South African whites oppressed in any fashion is not very popular. If South African whites were slaughtered at scale they'd garner some more sympathy. The value of this hypothetical changing sentiment a personal judgment.

Why? The Western public seems okay-ish with killing of Alawites and Druze in Syria.

The Western public is okay-ish with anyone killing anyone in countries they would struggle to find on a map except for Jews and Palestinians.

The amount of foreign interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict (on both sides) is orders of magnitude greater than other long-standing conflicts with a comparable humanitarian cost.

The alawites made their own bed. The public mostly isn’t ok with the murders of Druze and Christian civilians; if it was bigger news there would be an outcry.

I wish there were such an outcry, but I am skeptical; I can't recall one in my lifetime. Institutional U.S. policymakers don't want to be called crusaders or lose any more support in the Muslim world, and I don't think I have ever seen that policy come back to bite them domestically. Ted Cruz told a gathering of mideast Christians that he would never support them unless they supported Israel, and he only got a little pushback from the very online set.

I'm not sure why this is. The explanations I've seen floated are mostly bogus stereotypes of American Christians.

This concept is similar to the Trotskyite concept of 'no war, no peace'. (That the policy ended in disaster and Brest-Litovsk bodes ill.)

I’ll nitpick a bit if you don’t mind. Trotsky wasn’t exactly an idiot. The new Bolshevik regime was very far from stable in early 1918. In Brest-Litovsk they gave up the Western periphery of the collapsed Russian imperial state, areas they weren’t in effect controlling anyway, in exchange for stabilizing their dictatorship in the central areas with the approval of the German government. This was vital for their survival.

The treaty fulfilled two important roles.

The Germans were supporting the Bolshevik movement in the first place, and the only way they could repay their financier was by making a ceasefire and thus ending WW1 on the Eastern Front, and by surrendering territory, mostly farmland which the Germans (and Austrians) had a dire need of. And this is what they did.

It was also in the best interest of the Bolsheviks to give the impression to the outside world that the German imperialists forced them to sign a peace treaty at gunpoint. This is why the treaty was only signed after the Germans took the territories they wanted.

The differential between Palestine and Israel in terms of military capacity is greater than ever:

Far from it. Missile tech and drone tech is more dispersed than ever. Israel can't even occupy an area smaller than a municipality in almost two years even with exceptional brutality. Israel is a small country stuck in the same quagmire as South Vietnam, French Algeria or Rhodesia. They are never going to be a functioning country and permanently stuck in a state of emergency.

It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people.

Expecting an enemy not to commit war crimes is normal. Israels behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what jewish mindset is and that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset. The winning Palestinian strategy is to show the world what a bunch of religious fundamentalists on the west bank are actually like. There is a reason why western civilization despised these people for 2000 years and having them quoting biblical genocides while massacring starving Christians is an excellent way to bring back the west to our historical view of them.

Millions of Afghans died in the 80s. Millions of Vietnamese died, France was brutal against the Algerians. Being brutal against the locals is not an effective way to win. The British counter insurgency in Northern Ireland was far more effective.

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Israels behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what jewish mindset is and that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset.

There’s never been a country at war going so softly.

Never has there been such pains to not kill civilians.

What you think is honestly morally reprehensible - which is fine! It is what it is.

If any ‘ goyim ‘ sees it this way then it’s due to MSM insane-washing Islam and Islamists.

To me this underscores that a one-state solution is actually the only plausible solution with a degree of stability or peace. You are correct, you can't get out of a permanent state of emergency or highly militarized watchfulness without low-level police stuff, that's what law and order actually looks like. And to do that, it seems to me that the end goal must be to get to a point where there are Jewish citizens, and Palestinian citizens, and the state becomes more secular. I'm not suggesting that needs to or even could happen overnight, but it could happen with enough dedication. That's obviously not the current trajectory, but I view it as inclement on the Israelis to at least make overtures in that direction if they want to keep any kind of moral-practical high ground.

To me this underscores that a one-state solution is actually the only plausible solution with a degree of stability or peace.

Yes, the peace of the mass grave for the Jews. Although the Palestinians, once they are done with that, will probably start warring with their neighbors.

Oh no, they don't need to wait for the destruction of Israel to start warring with their other neighbors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September

western civilization despised these people

Not only western civilization, also ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, rooted in the Near East; The Assyrian and Babylonian empires, also Egypt.

Despise is a strong word. Sure the Babylonians annihilated Jerusalem, but the Israelites did foolishly try to rebel, and moving around conquered populations was a common tactic. Cyrus the Great famously let the exiles return and rebuild their temple. They did get into conflict with the Greeks and Romans over their unique heno/monotheistic thing.

There is a reason why western civilization despised these people for 2000 years

What is that reason?

Israels behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what jewish mindset is and that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset. The winning Palestinian strategy is to show the world what a bunch of religious fundamentalists on the west bank are actually like

Doesn't this go immediately in reverse if there's any meaningful Muslim success. Like at the moment it's just very child-level oppressor/oppressed stuff from the majority of Western audiences, but if the boot was on the proverbial other foot it would be even uglier.

No, because the Western-left position is oikophobic, and Israel is coded western and white because they're rich, technologically advanced, and don't play the noble savage or starving charity case. Also, there are a lot of thoroughly-assimilated western jews who in actuality have about as much to do with west bank settlers as boston unitarians have with Egyptian copts, but who fill in the western mind when they think of "jew." Also, the left has been hijacked by opportunistic arab/islamic in-group pandering.

As a result, the left is going to be anti-zionist until Israel either disappears or creates a desert and calls it peace.

Also, the left has been hijacked by opportunistic arab/islamic in-group pandering.

Yeah, a lot of this discussion is basically delusional in that it treats it as an ideological battle with coherent positions for Westerners to settle. It's tribal for a lot of people. They feel no need to be fair so there's no magic judo trick to be pulled on them. Like any group engaged in competition, they've just learned the rules. That pressing a certain button helps their cause.

If they ever won outright the pretense that it's about oppression as such goes out the window.

You're acting like the immediate reaction to October 7th wasn't shock and revulsion. I'm saying if Arabic countries drew blood from Israel in any meaningful way this would all just spin up back the other way. I don't think the West is Oikophobic, the West is loserphillic.

Except there was a really loud leftist/arab group celebrating Oct. 7 basically immediately. There were "Al Aqsa Flood"/pro-Palestinian parades/celebratory demonstrations in several US cities in early October, 2024, and lots of random hang-glider imagery.

Literally there were rallies celebrating the Oct 7 attack hours after. Complete with nazi slogans and cheers for the slaughter of "hipsters".

https://nypost.com/2023/10/08/nyc-pro-palestinian-rally-slammed-as-abhorrent-as-hamas-attacks-israel/

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/10/pro-palestine-rally-sydney-opera-house-protest-australia-leaders-condemn-anti-jewish-chants

And many, many more.

Don't pretend for a single second that sympathy was extended towards Israel in any meaningful amount. The telegram channels were full of celebration and promises of painting Al Aqsa with Jewish blood and when it was clear that victory was not exhaustive then it immediately flipped to "we will suffer a genocide!".

The western left position is purely oikophobic. It is subversive and vanguardist in equal measure, casting down the holders of power while preserving institutions so that the left can occupy the vacant seats. The contempt the western left displays for its cultural proximates is a side effect of its primary desire to place themselves on top of the power structure by exploiting any underclass vector.

I keep talking about the Arab telegram channels that livestreamed slaughter of children to heart eyes and cheers, but it really just seems to be screaming into the void here. Azzam Pasha can declare his intent to slaughter jews, Hamas charter calls to slaughter jews, Quran 5:51 and Bukharin 2925 explicitly call for the distrust and killing of Jews, the list of attacks against Jews in mandatory Palestine is a long chronology of terrorism, Arab states expelled jews and confiscated property the moment Israel was created, but its the Jews who are the evil ones.

No one cares about the Yazidi or Armenians or Copts because they were successfully extinguished as viable populations by muslims. Justice is not the objective, fulfilling the demand for a Recurring Bad Guy like a saturday morning villain matters. Bin Laden and al-Baghdadi are dead so no one cares about islamic terrorism. Wait that example doesn't work Jalani is alive and Bedouin slaughter of Druze is ignored. Islamic fundamentalism exploits the meta of sympathy where grievance is automatically legitimate and self defense is oppression when successful recompense when not.

It really does seem like we’re seeing propaganda at work here.

Sam Harris (who lost his mind in 2016) calling Islam a death cult is the forever correct thing.

Until a time that religion is as neutered as present day American Christianity, they should hold no place at the civilization table.

Islam was kind of ok when appropriated by syncretists who appreciated the latitude offered by simply being Not The Dominant. Mutazilites, Sufiism, Ahmadism, Hui Islam.

This of course all went to shit when the Saudis leveraged their stewardship of Mecca and the Aramco money to turbocharge Wahabism. Maintaining local control by exploiting Islam is one thing, actively exporting it is another. Salafi dominance was only checked by matching ultraconservative evolutions in Hanafi and even Shafi subschools like Deobandism or Dawah. Its an arms race for Who Is The Best Muslim and governments that profited from islamism as a wedge issue now are struggling to tame the beast. Every country that tried to distract from internal failings by promoting religious revivalism always falls prey to even more extreme versions of the religion, and that becomes an impossible trap to escape. Failing regimes are propped up by external aid because the donors suffer more if the regime collapses, not because of the worthiness of the regime. Pakistan getting 40bn of World Bank loans is because its implosion will massively destabilize Western Europe through refugees and nuclear proliferation, not because a milirary dictatorship surviving off Islamist revivalism is a stable polity worth investing in.

This of course all went to shit when the Saudis leveraged their stewardship of Mecca and the Aramco money to turbocharge Wahabism. Maintaining local control by exploiting Islam is one thing, actively exporting it is another.

This might simply be inevitable. Progressives have a seemingly totally secular ideology with no holy site but they also often coalesce around a certain set of specific totems and doctrines, even across borders.

The world is too connected now, we simply know too much about one another. Many localized forms of Islam - especially the offshoot religions generally considered heretical - will always be put under pressure by people attempting to make them orthodox because it's so much easier to notice and police now.

I come from a seemingly laid-back Muslim background but even we had the sense that there was such a thing as being more devout and strict and people who went that route were praised. The potential for being forcibly realigned with more conservative versions of Islam was always lurking.

You see similar things with claims that evangelicals essentially invented modern homophobia in African nations. Those countries have just as much access to the latest advances in liberal theory. It's their own judgment that the evangelicals better align with the faith that makes them more attractive, not their money or overwhelming control over the American cultural industry. The other side has that. But it can't change that they feel one case is just stronger

I think Michael C. Cook puts it well in Ancient Religions, Modern Politics (albeit using an extreme example):

My approach likewise diverges from the view that there is no such thing as Islam, just many local Islams. This view is perfectly coherent in principle, and some fragments of reality do indeed help us to imagine what it would be like to live in a world in which it was true. A plausible example of the ever-increasing religious entropy that would characterize such a world may be found among the Muslim Chams of Indo-China, particularly those of Annam, as described by French observers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their pantheon overlapped with that of their neighbors, the Hindu Chams, and included a mother goddess. They had a manuscript of the Bible that told of the creation of the sun god and moon goddess,8 and a central role in one of their rituals was played by a priestess.

This is not to say that they had lost touch with other forms of Islam altogether. They still knew about Allāh; indeed such was their respect for him that they abstained from sex on Mondays, the day of his birth.10 They still recited texts that bore some relationship to the Koran, and while the laity observed only a three-day Ramaḍān, the priests fasted for the full month.

Yet it does not take a card-carrying Wahhābī to feel an element of shock at this picture. We have here an example of a religion that has drifted so far from its origins as to be within sight of exemplifying a teasing idea developed by a philosopher of intellectual history: a tradition that has gradually changed over time to the point that no single element present at the start is still there at the end.

But to think of the Muslim world as nothing but a mosaic of religious traditions like that of the Chams would be very misleading. In the world in which we actually live, such unchecked drift is unlikely to continue indefinitely. A few centuries ago Islam was undoubtedly more polylithic than it is today, but it has never been a heap of rubble -- the centrifugal forces of time and distance are countered by the pull of homogenization.14 Such homogenizing forces were already at work in pre-modern times; more metropolitan forms of Islam have always had the potential to trump local differentiation. Modern conditions have rendered the effect even stronger. The Chams are again a case in point: a French source of 1891 mentions that some years previously three Muslim villages had abruptly abandoned the worship of their Cham gods; this was after a foreign Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca was passing through and condemned such practices.The pilgrim from Mecca had clearly put the Chams on the spot. But in a world in which there really was no such thing as Islam, just many local Islams, there would have been no spot for him to put them on.

Yazidi or Armenians or Copts because they were successfully extinguished as viable populations

All 3 currently exist. There are millions of the latter 2.

Poor Yazidi and Kurds. Its like the classic joke: Hitler announces a press conference announcing he will kill a million jews, romani and clowns. The reporters ask what did the clown do to deserve this.

The lot of a minority in an Arab state is to suffer indignities daily and attempts at forced conversions regularly, with the occasional pogrom for good measure. The lack of visible (to western eyes) discrimination is entirely due to subject populations being wholly subjugated or externinated. There are no more assyrians or chaldeans or zoroastrians, but because they are all gone there is 0 discrimination against them. If there is 0 discrimination it is 100% tolerance. I am logik.

There are no more assyrians or chaldeans or zoroastrians

Both exist, today!

Expecting an enemy not to commit war crimes is normal…that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset.

The “West” has done the kind of thing Israel is doing within living memory. One could easily argue Hiroshima and Nagasaki were more directly targeted at civilians than any major Israeli action in Gaza. (And the motive was the same, to force an unconditional surrender.) Personally I don’t believe Western civilization started in 1970, but I suppose if you do then you can make that argument.

Israel is a small country stuck in the same quagmire as South Vietnam, French Algeria or Rhodesia.

All three of those conflicts were winnable. South Vietnam was too corrupt, the other two had settler populations with homelands to return to. Most Israelis don’t have that, and while Israel has plenty of corruption it isn’t yet close to South Vietnam tier.

massacring starving Christians

0.13% of the Gazan population pre-war was Christian. You might indeed ask why the vast majority of Christians have been driven out of the Middle East since 1913, from Egypt to Iraq.

The “West” has done the kind of thing Israel is doing within living memory.

The most obvious historical analogy is 9/11 and the Global War on Terror. Ironically nobody wants to use that one. Free Palestine types don’t want to because it shows that Israel’s response isn’t particularly unique and that America has glassed half the Middle East in response to terrorism before. Pro-Israel types don’t like it because it’s a reminder that what Israel is doing is probably a terrible idea in the long run.

the other two had settler populations with homelands to return to.

10 to 25 percent of the Jewish population of Israel has citizenship elsewhere and that’s disproportionately held by the wealthier upper strata of the population. Given western polices toward family migration that could probably expand to 40 percent in a matter of months. About one percent of the country’s Jewish population left the country in 2024.

Free Palestine types don’t want to because it shows that Israel’s response isn’t particularly unique and that America has glassed half the Middle East in response to terrorism before.

America has never "glassed" the Middle East. That idiom refers specifically to total nuclear destruction (from the idea that the nukes are literally turning the desert to glass). America has invaded the Middle East, and conquered parts of it (which were relinquished, in a more orderly (Iraq) or less orderly (Afghanistan) fashion), but no glassing or anything even close to it (e.g. Dresden-style firebombing) has taken place.

Nor, of course, has Israel glassed Gaza, though they've certainly bombed the hell out of it.

10 to 25 percent of the Jewish population of Israel has citizenship elsewhere and that’s disproportionately held by the wealthier upper strata of the population.

And how much of that is useless Russian citizenship?

And how much of that is useless Russian citizenship?

Do you really believe that if Israël fell the entire citizen population wouldn’t be welcomed into the west with open arms? The west needs young taxpayers, which Israël has.

Why do you keep spelling it like that?

Do you really believe that if Israël fell the entire citizen population wouldn’t be welcomed into the west with open arms? The west needs young taxpayers, which Israël has.

The Mizrahim, the religious slackers, the ultranationalists - probably not.

Do you really believe that if Israël fell the entire citizen population wouldn’t be welcomed into the west with open arms?

If Israel fell, it would because the West (including the US in particular) had decided it was the bad guy, and no, the entire citizen population would not be welcomed under those circumstances.

People keep welcoming White South Africans various places despite being anti-apartheid, though I guess it's been a few decades.

Trump did, and the Episcopal Church shut down their refugee organization so they didn't have to help.

Probably would be some scruples about the orthodox population since they're not the most enthused net contributors

I don't really have a horse in this race, but I think it's worth noting how you can reproduce this entire comment with Israel and Palestine swapped and change... nothing.

For example:

Expecting an enemy not to commit war crimes is normal. Palestinian behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what the Muslim mindset is and that the Muslim view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset. The winning Israeli strategy is to show the world what a bunch of religious fundamentalists on the west bank are actually like.

I wish it were normal to expect enemies not to commit war crimes. Someone ought to have told the Palestinians about that before 10/7.

War crimes are only crimes insofar as both sides can agree to - and actually do - abide by particular rules of warfare, either customary or explicit by treaty. Insofar as one party either verbally refuses to or actually breaches those rules, they lose the protection of the rules and are subject to the whim of whatever the opposing party wants to do them (and can actually do/get away with doing).

Even the Red Cross accepts the concept of reprisal as a means of forcing non-conforming belligerents to shape up and fly right.

Has it? Have the Palestinians acted in any way that is significantly different from any other group? They are not really doing anything to different from any other insurgency.

They have dug the world's largest tunnel network to shelter military personnel, deliberately intermingled it with the civilian population and vital civilian infrastructure, and denied those civilians the ability to shelter in it. They are trying to get their people killed.

So did the Viet Cong.

You really believe Hamas invented the concept of digging tunnels to neutralize airpower? Seriously?

For one, the extent to which Hamas operates from structures (hospitals, schools, etc) which are protected by international law is quite unusual.

I don't have a particularly strong view on the conflict but I do feel that the Israelis have a far greater chance of establishing and running a functional state than the other side.

far greater chance

Might this be a distinction without a difference.

If Hamas have a sufficiently low probability of success doubling, tripling or even 10 x, while a greater chance is still very, very low in absolute terms.

If Hamas laid down their arms and initiated an actual unconditional surrender Gaza would likely be a below-median but perfectly functional part of Israel within a decade. Vice-versa hahahaha.

That horse has bolted. Hard to go 'ok bros we didnt lose but lets try peace anyways' and survive if peace succeeded. The immediate response would be "we could have been ok but we followed you for NOTHING".

To rebuild, the existing foundation must be destroyed root and branch. Total Hamas defeat is in fact a clean starting point for a new Palestinian political conceptualization to emerge. Jordan would be best, but given what happened to the West Bank where the Palestinians chose irredentist claims such an outcome is distressingly remote.

Expecting an enemy not to commit war crimes is normal. Israels behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what jewish mindset is and that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset. The winning Palestinian strategy is to show the world what a bunch of religious fundamentalists on the west bank are actually like. There is a reason why western civilization despised these people for 2000 years and having them quoting biblical genocides while massacring starving Christians is an excellent way to bring back the west to our historical view of them.

In large measure the Western response has created this mindset. It did so by casting Israel as always the perpetrator no matter what anyone else did, or how restrained they were in response. Eventually they understood that restraint doesn’t help them at all, and that it quite often emboldens those who attack them. Eventually the threat of UN and international condemnation holds no weight because it’s not like they weren’t going to be condemned anyway, so who cares.

The British counter insurgency in Northern Ireland was far more effective.

By what metrics are you basing this assertion on? I believe this is not the first time you've made this comparison. The counter-insurgency concluded with a power-sharing agreement between Protestants and Catholics, the unconditional release of all imprisoned IRA members, a recognition of the right of Northern Ireland to secede from the UK if a plurality of its residents approved, and the dissolution of the Northern Irish police force in favour of a new police force which was required to employ Protestants and Catholics in equal numbers. Is that what an effective counter-insurgency looks like to you?

The fact that they achieved peace and created a functioning society in which many protestants live. Subjegating Palestinians is never going to work as the conflict isn't going to end if there is no deal for the Palestinians to accept. You can't have a large portion of the country that fundamentally doesn't accept the current order and have no reason to do so.

The lives of peaceful Israeli Arabs are on average some of the best in the region (especially if you take out all of the 'oh we have oil and support a 10%-citizen population with infinite money cheat'), peace deals have been offered previously, the best case scenario for independent Palestine is Lebanon 2: Electric Boogaloo. Any semi-rational person is surrendering.

The lives of peaceful Israeli Arabs are on average some of the best in the region.

They have denied most people living their citizenship. People are banned from living on the land the family has lived on for generations.

Why should they sign a peace deal with a country that wants 70+ of the land and with a country that is attacking all its neighbours? It is a concession with nothing to gain.

What? The Arabs living in actual Israel have full citizenship and famously have representation in the Israel parliament. If you're going to be a jew-hater at least get the facts right.

First of all, that's quite an uncharitable take. The comment didn't read to me as Jew-hating.

Equally as famously, most Palestinians in Israel (or the area overall, depending on how you parse the term) are not citizens and live under second-class conditions. If we're being fair, that's partly because the PA is supposed to be in charge but actually are mostly grifters, so they've delegated blame, but ultimately you don't really see Israel trying to expand citizenship to more Palestinians, even though by your own logic that would probably increase their peacefulness?

If we're being fair, that's partly because the PA is supposed to be in charge but actually are mostly grifters, so they've delegated blame, but ultimately you don't really see Israel trying to expand citizenship to more Palestinians

Given that PA territory is under full civil administration by PA, I'm not sure how would you expect Israel giving citizenship to Arabs living there. Security arrangements are more complex, but for this it doesn't matter - PA enjoys pretty much complete self-rule in civil matters (and so did Gaza btw) so calling Arabs living there "second class" compared to Israelis is just bizarre - they are not Israelis at all. As for PA leadership being grotesquely corrupt and indifferent to the needs of the population - that's extremely common situation in the Middle East, and Israel can't really fix it. It could annex the PA territory, kick out the PA and provide its own institutions, but nobody wants that. Short of that, the Arabs will have to do with the institutions they can build for themselves, and if those are not great, it's not Israel's fault.

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The one-state solution with enfranchised Palestinians is my preferred solution, and when I lived there I saw some moves towards this, especially in the West Bank (particularly in East Jerusalem). Unfortunately I don’t think that’s palatable to the Israeli electorate any more after 10/7.

When I refer to Israel I’m referring to the parts of the country that are broadly recognized. Not West Bank, Gaza, or the Golan Heights. In these territories, Arabs have full citizenship and can vote and have elected many people to the Knesset. They definitely are still discriminated against, but in a manner much more similar to American racial politics vs. the apartheid. It’s also not like there’s no intra-Jewish tension either. Lots of Sephardic/Ashkenazi conflict along racial lines.

What I find frustrating is the equating of these two groups of Arabs. Those who live in Israel have relatively normal lives, probably better than they would have in their neighboring countries. Those in the West Bank/gaza are living in occupied territory.

In terms of jew hating, I'm not responding to this comment in particular but further up thread where he said things like

There is a reason why western civilization despised these people for 2000 years and having them quoting biblical genocides while massacring starving Christians is an excellent way to bring back the west to our historical view of them.

I don't deny their second-class within Israel but is an independent Palestine likely to develop living conditions that are on aggregate better?

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and with a country that is attacking all its neighbours?

As I've already pointed out in this thread, such a description applies to a significant chunk of Middle Eastern nations, which hasn't stopped them from signing peace agreements with each other in the recent past.

Palestine, unlike Lebanon, would be ethnically pure. The Christians are mostly gone, there wasn’t a large Shia population to begin with.

Sorry they would emulate the great economic and wellbeing successes of Syria, Jordan, Egypt etcetera.

50 thousands Arab Christians would be very surprised to know they are "mostly gone". Gaza, indeed, was pretty much cleansed of Christians by Hamas, which is what happens when you give Islamic fundamentalists free reign of the territory, but in PA, where comparatively less insane Fateh is ruling, Christians still exist. Of course, just as all the good-wishers of the world totally ignored what happened to Christians who used to live in Gaza, if PA decides to cleanse all Christians from PA territory, nobody would even squeak, no Jews - no news. Things like that happened many times in other places (in the Middle East and outside) and no students on college campuses ever protested about it. You all know why.

50 thousand out of almost five million is, indeed, mostly gone. Christians used their IQ advantage to look around, realize it was time to get the hell out of dodge, and then promptly do so. 1% of the population can't fight a Lebanese civil war.

created a functioning society in which many protestants live

The way this is framed suggests to me that you didn't realise the Protestants were the ones holding the whip at the outset of the insurgency.

Subjegating Palestinians is never going to work as the conflict isn't going to end if there is no deal for the Palestinians to accept.

On at least three occasions, the Palestinians have been offered deals significantly more generous than that offered to Northern Irish Catholics in 1998. They have refused all of them because they refuse to compromise, to their own detriment more than to that of the Israelis.

The current genocidaires of China (by internment), Iran (by ethnic displacement) and North Korea (by starvation) are currently suffering zero consequences for their actions. Suppose that yes, Israel is stuck with such a charge. So what? That's not a strategy, that's a tactic, one that is failing. If your logic is then 'the Jews will be ashamed, and everyone will embargo them into dissolution' then it is incomplete. Who, if anyone, would try and enforce any consequence?

The Arabs aren't lining up to invade Israel. Certainly, the Europeans lack the capacity. Indeed, the expected behavior of the international community to an active genocide is to do nothing and fiercely regret its aftermath.

But that's ceding the point, and accepting the charge on face value. If they are at war, then they are not responsible for feeding the enemy's civilians. The Allies didn't worry themselves about their enemy's starving civilians. Neither did the Axis. If they are not at war, and they are policing occupied territory, then they can distribute aid as they wish. They don't need to feed those who are waging a guerilla war against them, or incorporate them into their aid mechanism. The Americans didn't worry themselves about feeding the Taliban.

So which one is it?

Israel is a small country, but Gaza is even smaller. It is perfectly possible for them to enforce a complete blockade on their terms. This is not something any other colonial occupying power has had the power to accomplish. Israel wants a total and complete surrender, unconditional and without third party mediation. The longer it takes, the worse the Palestinian people will suffer. They want a political solution that solves the Gaza problem forever, no matter how much the international community calls them war criminals. What do they care? They're already a pariah state to half the world.

They're never going to return back to the status quo. UNWRA and the NGOs will never be allowed back. Using food as a tool for regime change isn't moral in the least, but then again, kidnapping civilians for use as hostages at the bargaining table isn't moral, either.

Being brutal against the locals is not an effective way to win.

You just cherrypicked several unsuccessful attempts even in relatively late times. Croats literally performed ethnic cleansing of Serbs under NATO umbrella and were successful. Czechoslovakia and Poland were absolutely brutal toward native Germans living in the area for 500+ years and were successful in solving the "German problem" creating ethnically homogenous states. Plus don't forget about ongoing war in Ukraine with "war crimes" aplenty.

What you described is all poxy/colonial wars with little to no investment of local population. The comparison of Israel as a colonial power similar to France in Algeria is absolutely misguided, millions of Israelis cannot just pack and leave such as French from Algeria or Americans from Vietnam or Soviets from Afghanistan. Again, just look at Ukraine war where Russians are willing to shoulder losses two orders of magnitude higher compared to their previous colonial military engagements. It is a completely different game.

So in other words Israel's only strategy would be creating a giant refugee crisis 300 km from Europe. Nobody wants that. Israel is a small state that is going to be in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them.

Rhodesia and French Algeria existed longer than Israel and had people who had lived there for generations. Jews are rootless cosmopolitans and should find a new home.

Israel is a small state that is going to be in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them.

This is incorrect.

Rhodesia and French Algeria existed longer than Israel and had people who had lived there for generations.

I don't believe either of these is true for Rhodesia, at least, though the latter claim might be technically true extremely tendentiously. Rhodesia existed, either as a colony or a self-declared state, for 56. Since the first settlers moved in at 1890s or so, there might have been some families that would have gone back 3 or even 4 generations, but most white Rhodesians had moved in only after WW2 (the white population was 65 000 in 1940 and peaked at 300 000 in 1975).

Israel is a... state that is going to be in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them.

I note that this is a description which applies equally well to literally every country in the Middle East, and yet for some reason you're only calling for the Israelis to find a new home.

Israel has engaged in military action against Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen and Iraq. Who else comes close to that much war?

Let's have a look. In the last hundred years, and excluding the second world war (for the reason illustrated by its title), by my count:

  • Bahrain has been involved in 2 conflicts, one involving Saudi Arabia.
  • Egypt has been involved in 6 conflicts (including several civil wars) variously involving Israel, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
  • Iran has been involved in 16 conflicts (including several civil wars/revolutions) variously involving Azerbaijan, the no-longer extant Kurdish republic, Kuwait, Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
  • Iraq has been involved in 22 conflicts (including several civil wars, insurgencies etc.) variously involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait and Israel.
  • Jordan has been involved in 3 conflicts variously involving both Israel and Palestine.
  • Kuwait has been involved in 2 conflicts variously involving Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
  • Lebanon has been involved in 11 conflicts (including numerous civil wars) variously involving Syria, Israel and Palestine.
  • Saudi Arabia has been involved in 11 conflicts variously involving Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, Iran and the UAE.
  • Syria has been involved in 14 conflicts (including numerous civil wars) variously involving Lebanon, Israel and the no-longer extant United Arab Republic.
  • Turkey has been involved in 5 conflicts (including civil wars, revolutions etc.), one involving the Iraqi Kurds.
  • Yemen has been involved in 17 conflicts (including numerous civil wars) variously involving Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Israel.

"A state that is in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them" seems to describe the modal Middle Eastern country pretty well. Given the base rate of conflict and strife in the region, Israel really doesn't strike me as much of an outlier. It's almost unique in the region in having underwent zero civil wars or violent revolutions (attempted or successful) in the last hundred years i.e. since its founding. Contrary to the claim that responsibility for Middle Eastern instability ultimately rests with the Great Satan Israel, the majority of the conflicts listed above didn't directly involve Israel in any capacity.

As an aside, can I just say that "Arab solidarity" is like "military intelligence": a contradiction in terms.

Israel has engaged in acts of aggression against six countries in the past coupleof months. Note that many of the conflicts cited above are related to Israel or the fallout of Isreali caused issues, for example Lebanon. Iraq has had wars caused by AIPAC funded politicians.

That's all true, but doesn't change the fact that routine acts of military aggression against your neighbours or your own people have been the norm in pretty much the entirety of the Middle East for the last century. It's also plainly obvious that many of the acts of aggression you cite were defensive in nature.

So in other words Israel's only strategy would be creating a giant refugee crisis 300 km from Europe.

Other countries do that. Syrians do that, Sudanese do that, Pakistanis do that. In a sense Palestinians from Gaza are peanuts when it comes to potential issues and resulting refugee crisis right know in the whole Sahel region.

Nobody wants that. Israel is a small state that is going to be in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them.

Not really. Many of Israel's neighbors - like Egypt or Saudi Arabia - don't give a single shit about Palestinians except for some platitudes. In fact it is Western countries who are more active in this sense. Plus I think that this is already old news, Israel will be considered a bad guy no matter what - there are people who still throw 1948 expulsion at them

Sudan is nowhere near the Sahel, but even aside from that, how many of those Sudanese refugees are going to Europe?

Sudan us part of Sahel, read up. In fact the broader instability also attracts additional countries and factions such as mercenary factions from Lybia fighting in Sudan or Ethiopia.

They will not "go find a new home" because getting in on the business of colonizing/genociding/enlightening the savages that the western civilization has been enjoying for the past 2000 years is strictly better for them than staying at the complete mercy of said western civilization.

They could find some plot of land in Africa or Latin America with a far lower population to resettle to. Their claim to Israel is that they bought the land in exchange for half the skin on their babies pensises which is a rediculus premise for a country.

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they bought the land in exchange for half the skin on their babies pensises

Too antagonistic.

You have been warned and banned before for this type of behavior. You have multiple other comments in the queue right now. 7 day ban

Muslims circumcise themselves as well. Muslim Palestinians are just as circumcised as Jewish Israelis, so that doesn't function as a tribal distinction any more.

Their claim to Israel is that they bought the land in exchange for half the skin on their babies pensises which is a rediculus premise for a country.

Reductive racism back on the menu!

How about this: the entire Arab claim to the region is from a pedophiliac warlord preaching tolerance when he was weak and sheltered by the Banu Qurayza, then he betrayed them and enslaved their women and children through promising religiously ordained rape and slavery of unbelievers to mobilize desert nomads into a bandit horde. The chronological Quran is the inverse of the Bible: peace tolerance and manumission before victory, absolutist Arab supremacism justifying subjugation and humiliation of unbelievers once a power base was established.

THAT is the root of Arab claim to the region, forced conversions and displacements of Copts and Maronites and total annihilation of Chaldeans and Assyrians and Zoroastrians. Baby foreskins are currency to purchase land? What a wonderful concept. Arabs certainly found it easy to pay for their lucre with thriving Zanzibar slave eunuchs too, though simply slaughtering locals and forcibly converting remnants was also a great currency.

All this framing is obviously intensely hostile and deliberately so, because reductive polemicism opens up similar avenues of attack to other actors, avenues by which the directionality of hostility make clear why such polemicism is avoided by modern anti-israelis. Objecting to the jewish state on such grounds means objecting to the Ottoman Mamluk and Sassanid/Roman predecessors as well. Return to glorious Eber-Nari as the last relatively clean incarnation of that damnable region.

Or they have a claim that they have actually lived there for centuries and have strong family ties to the place. Unlike 1.5 million Israelis who showed up from Eastern Europe in the 90s claiming to live there because of penis skin. Not to mention that many Palestinians are Christian, especially before Israel wrecked the Christian population.

And the Jews lived in Jerusalem before per the Roman record, till they were displaced by invaders later on. Guess its a new invader now, or are we going "no take backsies". In which case India better return Dehli to Islamabad per the Mughal Empire.

Jewish settlement of Israel going back millennia is well-documented.

They could find some plot of land in Africa or Latin America with a far lower population to resettle to.

Should've sold them Gascoyne, seriously.

Yeah. Having lived up in Darwin for a year I'd love to see how the Israelis would have approached certain local issues compared to the Australians, plus that's genuinely a super high potential piece of land that could have led to a prosperous and strong state.

If no one wanted that land in Africa and Latin America why should the Jews?

Your schtick of acting like Israel is the only country in history to ever do naked conquest as opposed to simply being the most recent one is getting stale. At least when the bleeding heart progs do it, their historical and ethical myopia is consistent. When you combine trying to paint Israel as evil for the actions of Israel and trying to paint Israel as evil because Jews have been uniquely evil for 2000 years it's just incoherent.

Your schtick of acting like Israel is the only country in history to ever do naked conquest as opposed to simply being the most recent one is getting stale.

Israel’s only real crime was getting founded just a couple of years after that type of thing became unfashionable.

At the exact same time Israel declared independence, an ethnic cleansing/population exchange a literal order of magnitude larger was already going on in another part of the same empire.

They're a country out of time. It can't go on.

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Because having a jewish ethnostate built in a densely populated area close to Europe is a bad idea and something that will lead to constant headache for the rest of us. Israel in the middle east has been 80 years of trouble and is set up to be another 80 years of trouble. AIPAC and the Zionist lobby has pushed for a multitude of disastrous wars both for the region and for Europe as well as for American tax payers. Israel is a permanent welfare queen due to its placement.

Israel was not placed there for some rational reason but because of a belief in that the land could be bought for mutilated baby penises. Either Israel can learn to coexist with its neighbours in peace or it should relocate.

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Millions of Afghans died in the 80s. Millions of Vietnamese died, France was brutal against the Algerians. Being brutal against the locals is not an effective way to win.

It is. They just weren't brutal enough.

Then modern western societies, liberal or not, are incapable of being brutal enough to win counterinsurgencies with no public support. Apartheid South Africa couldn’t do it. Salazar’s Portugal couldn’t do it.

It's kind of incredible how the Vietnam war has seemed to fade so quickly from the public consciousness over the last decade or two. Maybe deserves a main thread post at some point.

Well Vietnam Syndrome has been replaced by Iraq Syndrome.

So a newer example plus the passage of time is all it takes to change public consciousness.

Creating a jewish state by genociding all the people living there including a large portion of Christians is abhorrent. Palestine's best asset is jews posting content in English and showing the world what Talmudic logic is like.

Large portion of Christians? The Gaza Christian population is about a tenth of a percent (potentially something to do with how the locals have historically treated members of other religions). Israel's population is about a sixth Islamic, who for the most part live in conditions a bit worse than the Jews but still rich, affluent, educated and healthy compared to the rest of the Middle East.

It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people.

It’ll be nice to see siege warfare make a return.

Ive read 'Gaza is starving' since 2023 end Oct. Hell I've seen that headline since 2013. First time I've seen starvation cause population expansion.

To be clear, you think that Gazans aren't starving, and the population is growing, during the war? What a strange take. (Statistically anyways in the pre-war period it's quite possible for a subset to starve while a different subset is above-replacement fertile, so I kind of wonder if you're just conflating headlines)

Yes there is no famine. The gazans are not starving, distribution is uneven and that is causing likely malnutrition and food insecurity but not famine. Famine is a loaded term to evoke sympathetic terms, so lets use the famine cases and population effects.

https://adst.org/2014/05/the-famine-in-biafra-usaids-response-to-the-nigerian-civil-war/ Biafra war:
1967 prewar population: 13-15m Deaths attributable to famine: 1-3m Percentage: 8-25%

https://www.refugeesinternational.org/events-and-testimony/accountability-for-starvation-deaths-in-tigray-six-months-after-the-war/ Tigray War: 2020 prewar population: 6m Dearhs attributable to famine: 150-600k Percentage: 2.5%-10%

Now lets look at Gaza: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/24/death-toll-from-starvation-in-gaza-rises-to-115-as-israeli-attacks-continue 2023 prewar population 2023 prewar population: 1.9-.2m Deaths attributable to famine: 111 Percentage: rounding error. Literally.

If the argument is caloric insufficiency, goods restriction, etc, fine. Thats real. But the argument is that Gaza is being starved to death, and the numbers simply don't bear that out.

Total deaths is about 50-60k in Gaza, which by Hamas accounts is entirely pregnant women and journalists. Oh wait no Hamas itself said that they have replenished their numbers of dead "matyrs" https://www.memri.org/tv/sami-abu-zuhri-hamas-gaza-war-babies-women-wombs-martyred-american-campuses

Famine is a loaded term, not to be employed lightly. Whatever the morality of the Gazan suffering - I make clear that I have no sympathy for people who incompetently execute their desires to assault their neighbours only to whine about retaliation after - the charge of famine is one that deserves to be taken seriously. Harvard college students on hunger strike go below the 1200 calorie per day average, Gazans report mass starvation and famine since 2023 yet have rounding error deaths attributable to hunger. I'll revise my position if the external blockade results in the so called mass starvation, but I've got family records of eating pondweed to survive, with multiple children dying during ww2 and entire clan extensions wiped out during the great leap forward. Don't fucking toss around "famine" just because its a high valence term, it degrades the meaning.

Gaza had near 0 capacity to grow its own food after it blew up its greenhouses and it relies entirely on foreign trade/aid to obtain food. It attacks said source of aid, then whines when aid is restricted in turn. It is pure bad faith action and it places the burden of responsibility on the defender for the consequences suffered by the attacker which is an insane inversion of responsibility. Hamas and PA rejected solutions that require commitment to peace and acknowledgment of Israel, holding out for maximalist aims. The 2 or 3 state solution is ideal, but will a Palestinian state be held responsible if it continues to launch attacks or fails to hold its own bad actors responsible? Jordan and Egypts masterstrokes were to disclaim West Bank and Gaza as their territories, leaving then to be Israels problem going forward. Hamas and PA are also unable to function without Israeli aid but also are existentially founded on opposition to Israels existence. This is an impossible circle to square and the expectation that Israel should moderate its "stop trying to kill us every time we step away" position is insane. Israel has 20% Arabs, what happened to the Gazan christians. Hell what happened to the Shia.

There is no Gaza famine. There is no Gaza genocide. There is no Israel ethnic state. All the arguments against Israel are tortured caricatures to ensure that a big bad bogeyman is available to act as a recurring saturday morning cartoon villain, always coming back with a dastardly plan so the cheerleaders can shout hooray when the bad guy gets egg on its face. Maybe the Israelis should make sure their entire cabinet and media team is made up of Mizrahis or Beta Israelis, preferably the swarthier and more squashnosed ones to emphasize lack of slavicised ancestry.

Oh god is it all anti-slav discrimination again? Putin senpai please notice your kin!

I can respect most of that. However I'd politely note that I never used the word famine. I was trying to figure out a little more detail about your position. I do want to also note that when the invasion happened, Israeli tanks basically flattened half the farmland that was left, and I can dig up an article or two with the satellite receipts if you really want, but I think the point is a bit of a distraction/moot because even the extant greenhouses and fields were never going to be enough in the first place. Hunger is still pretty awful subjectively, even if it doesn't result in death, of course. (On a personal note, yes I agree it deserves to be taken seriously. I have a good number of pioneer/homesteader type ancestors, and some of what they had to do to survive on occasion is pretty gruesome.)

In the end I don't think we can fully escape the original shadow: Is it realistic for Israel to "step away" from a problem of their own creation? Or should we care about "who started it"? Personally I'm of the admittedly minority opinion that Israel should only be bound by guilt up to, say, 1978, and then only slightly, '82 or '85 also seem reasonable. Yet we still have to be realistic. Everyone has their own houses to clean: the PA needs to get their act together, Hamas needs to stop existing (or more accurately Gazans need to entirely reject them), Israel needs to come up with a reconstruction plan for Gaza which its own bombs ultimately busted up, and the neighbors of Israel have no real responsibility to help but it would be nice if they pitched in a little bit. I also think Israel ultimately can't have it both ways: either they retain control, as a Jewish bloc, over their democracy, or they don't, but they have to be honest about why in both cases (timelines and details are negotiable); parallel to this, either they figure out a more durable two-state-ish solution, or resign themselves to being permanently interventionist forever, and they are literally the only ones capable of taking the lead there, because of their large negotiating position and functioning government. Is it somewhat unfair that Israel needs to man up and take responsibility, because no one else will? Yes. But as my dad likes to say, life aint fair.

"of their own creation" is doing too much heavy lifting. In 1948 the Arabs invaded immediately, with Egypt and Jordan making little effort to integrate the Gaza and West Bank polities that were their nominal responsibility. When Jordan tried, they were rewarded with Black September. Lebanon collapsed when Palestinians allied with Hezbollah to use a functional state as a shield to launch rockets from. Gazan fields are a nice thing to show, because it immediately invalidates the "open air prison" narrative that makes Gaza seem like Kowloon Walled City under constant bombardment. Turns out there ARE open fields where Hamas could have operated from instead of under hospitals!

Ultimately holding Israel responsible ignores that the agency that Palestinians display repeatedly. Given the choice between a hardline maximalist versus a theoretical cooperative entity they have ALWAYS chosen hardline maximalism. There is no actor in Palestine territories calling for peace and recognition of Israel, and their cause is supported not just by geographicallyproximate Arabs who on a good day find it incredibly funny to irritate Israel eternally and on a bad day (most days) wish to drown the sands in Jewish blood in accordance with the Quran, but by rich westerners who at best are ideologically blinded by manichean moral framings and at worst are just barely (and cowardly) hiding their antisemitism. Hate jews if one wishes, as many do, but at least be honest. Sophistry works in echo chambers not in reality.

The arab population within Israel is 20%. They are the Palestinian arabs that stayed in place and did not flee, and for that they were granted citizenship and participation in a project that makes this population the richest and most prosperous of their monoethnic neighbours. This domestic population has assholes just like the Haredi and settlers are largely assholes, but it is not nearly as bad as the Palestinians who are given maximal succour for their eternal dickishness.

There is a two state solution REPEATEDLY offered. It is Hamas that and PA that reject a 2 state solution that does not involve ISRAELI disarmanent and permanent withdrawal from Gaza. Hamas wants eternal ceasefire (Israel ceases Hamas fires) and no disarmanent. I see zero demands for accountability for Hamas and the Gazans who express repeatedly their desire for Hamas to press maximalist claims, and I directly attribute such fervent optimism to foreign pressure on Israel to accept the unworkable. Hamas repeatedly breaks ceasefires to cheers from Palestinians and their win condition is satisfied either way.

Israel is not being ALLOWED to take responsibility because international pressure is inconsistent and shapes domestic politics into temporally transient positions. There is little chance Israel can effect either a maximalist cleansing operation or a reconstruction effort with both eternal foreign pressure and Gazan intransigence. Again, the hypocrisy is on full display. No one gives a single shit about Arktash, Palestine is incomplete until it is made whole from river to the sea with jews expelled to the void.

Maybe they should do that. Arab populations exploded with foreign food and healthcare access. On their own recognizance they would not be able to feed or medicate themselves and their populations would revert to the limit of their organic capability. Again, Israelis should just Migrant Fleet on a 4 year Carnival Cruise buyout. It'll also improve the reputation of that cursed company.

This recent article from WaPo via their local reporters is filled with anonymous and Unnamed General claims, so I take it with a grain of psyop salt, but its the first time I've seen a WaPo-like outlet assert that the food aid is important to Hamas operations with any specifics attached.

For instance, the officials said, Hamas seized at least 15 percent of some goods, like flour, and aid vouchers that international agencies had intended to provide to hungry Gazans...

A Gazan businessman said Hamas had imposed a tax of a least 20 percent on many goods. But the group also would take control of trucks carrying high-demand goods like flour, which could sell for up to $30 for a kilogram, and steal fuel meant for aid groups. Fuel supplies have produced high revenue for Hamas during the war, with the group both taxing and seizing fuel stored at gas stations for sale, said an Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with military protocol.

Taking control of the food distribution is the first yuge strategic decision that Israel has committed to following the invasion. If aid supplies are as critically important for Hamas as reason and reporting implies, then this is actually a plan to judge. Hamas can subsidize motivation with martyrdom, but even fervor requires sustenance. Assuming Israel doesn't starve everyone to death -- which I don't expect they will -- then the NGOs will cave before famine. They will submit to Israel's request to manage all the aid distribution and Israel takes full charge of the grain doles. I guess it is technically more accurate to call the GHF an American group sanctioned by Israel for aid distribution, but, is anyone under the impression there's any real difference in this case?

They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.

Which, until that happens, Gaza and the responsibilities associated with managing will increasingly fall to Israel. Until it finally becomes governance. Sure seems to me they wanted to avoid that outcome and may have even procrastinated decisions in hopes of an alternative. Israel left Gaza not 20 years ago. There's no winning. Not even if they defeat their enemies do they win.

At the moment Israelis may shrug callously at the idea of governing Gaza. Certainly not with any measure of goodwill or with any concern for headaches that are associated with that responsibility. Until I see the yet-to-be-seen viable alternative actually come into existence, then that's what the future looks like to me. Alternatively, Hamas has enough recruiting power to be fed by Israeli aid distribution while continuing to lead the forever war. I doubt it.

Does Israel actually want to be the ones distributing aid? It was my impression that they kind of like the current situation, where Gaza mostly starves but it's not their fault directly (they can blame the UN and other NGOs for doing a bad job of distribution inside Gaza, which is admittedly an awful job with terrible logistics and security implications).

Does Israel actually want to be the ones distributing aid?

Yes, because they can prevent it from being directly hijacked by Hamas. (What hamas fighters do to Palestinians who take food to homes outside of Israeli-controlled safe zones is different, but that's a lot less efficient for Hamas than just seizing/being handed the aid while it's still loaded on the trucks as the UN was doing).

It was my impression that they kind of like the current situation, where Gaza mostly starves but it's not their fault directly

No, because that way Hamas controlled the aid and could continue to starve the population while keeping all the goodies for themselves to enable further armed resistance/rebuilding after the ultimate end of the war - and it will end, because the IDF doesn't have the full-time soldiery to keep up this occupation without calling up large numbers of reservists and disrupting the civilian economy.

Does Israel actually want to be the ones distributing aid?

I don't know. The March-April blockade ends with Israel propping up, scaling, and now supporting its own sanctioned distribution network. The GHF posts daily press releases. Today's message is the same as yesterday's:

“As we exceed 91 million meals delivered to the people of Gaza to date, we are taking a moment to reflect on the adversity we’ve overcome for this herculean humanitarian mission. Our aid staff and local partners have demonstrated tremendous courage and commitment to those in need.

“Looking ahead, we will not stop until our mission to feed as many Palestinians in Gaza is accomplished. We are also offering to distribute UN and other international organization aid for free — we have the scale and operational efficiency to feed more Gazans, and we encourage all humanitarian groups on the ground to partner with us. The people of Gaza are depending on us and we cannot let them down.”

Israel wants to at least threaten a commitment to solely manage aid distribution. If you think "ceasefire talks" are serious, and Israel is going to sign a deal for some hostages, pack up, and go home, then this is simple leverage to speed that process along. If you think ceasefire talks are not very serious, and to me this appears very possible, then this may be the start of the long haul. It looks like one stage of a plan than it does negotiating leverage, but I'm open to other interpretations. If the UN does hand over its trucks to the GHF I'll be more certain.

The Israelis are not bluffing. They will not give in, no matter what the pressure. They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.

They're not bluffing, but will the US stay their hand when no such entity appears?

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